Vultures Namibia

About Vultures Namibia

Our main activity is the monitoring of Lappet-faced Vultures in Namibia.

History

The flamboyant French traveller and naturalist Francois Le Vaillant killed a vulture (with the butt of his rifle!) in southern Namibia and wrote about it in his travel journal published in 1795. Thanks to a German translation of the book in 1796 the bird became known to science as the Lappet-faced Vulture! In the centuries that followed, explorers, traders and missionaries published accounts of their adventures in Namibia and one of them, Charles John Andersson, wrote the first "guidebook" to the birds of Namibia titled "Notes on the birds of Damara Land and adjacent countries of South West Africa", published post-humously in 1872. During the colonial time expeditions to collect biological specimens, mainly for museums, were conducted but proper scientific study of Namibia's avifauna only started after the First World War and it concentrated mostly on description and distribution of the avifauna. Dedicated studies on Namibia's vultures would only start much later.

In the late 1960s the government ornithologist Dr RAC Jensen started studying the Lappet-faced Vultures in the Namib and the work was continued by his successors Charles Clinning and Dr Chris Brown. The Namibia Bird Club also contributed by monitoring the Cape Vulture breeding colony at the Waterberg and ringing chicks at the colony and on farms. In 1991, Peter Bridgeford, aided by his wife Marilyn and other colleagues, started ringing Lappet-faced Vultures in the Namib-Naukluft Park, initially only in the Sukses - Sossusvlei area along the Tsauchab River. Gradually the area was expanded until eventually the entire Park was covered. When Peter retired from government, the work was continued under the banner of the Vulture Study Group. However, since this was essentially a South African group it was felt that an "own" identity was needed and hence, at a raptor workshop held at Waterberg Plateau Park in February 2005, the name "Vultures Namibia" was adopted.