MAY 21, 2019
The Egyptian vulture, a bird
species bearing much cultural significance in both ancient Egyptian and Greek
mythology, is drastically declining in population due to various human-caused
threats.
Every year, billions of different
bird types migrate along a south-north axis, with the Middle East located at
the crucial juncture of Africa, Asia and Europe and therefore constituting an
important corridor for this seasonal movement of birds. While Egyptian vultures
that breed in milder regions migrate southwards in winter, their tropical
counterparts remain relatively sedentary.
A worrying trend that has
recently gained the attention of bird conservationists, is that this species
has been in massive decline throughout the past century. In fact, their
population is considered to have halved since 1980, according to the IUCN Red List of
Threatened Species.
Six species of vultures are
currently recorded in Egypt – some being rarer than others – and while no
recent study has determined the exact size of their population, they are
generally in decline, Mindy Baha al-Din, bird specialist with the NGO Nature
Conservation Egypt has
noted.
