Scavengers News

KATHMANDU — On a bright morning in the hills of Nepal, among the green needles and brown cones of a chir pine tree (Pinus roxburghii) a pair of white-rumped vultures…

Authorities investigating the discovery of 14 dead vultures in a feeding zone that’s meant to be safe for the scavenging birds have found that they died from eating poisoned bait…

Thought to mostly feed on rabbits, researchers accidentally observed Iberian lynx feeding on carrion, a potential food source but also posing a disease risk to the Iberian lynx, which recently saw its numbers rebound.

KATHMANDU — As dawn breaks over the forest in the Kawasoti area on the edge of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, early risers can catch a glimpse of rare vultures roosting…

KATHMANDU — If you were a grumpy cat, you’d probably want to avoid company. And if you were the world’s grumpiest, as David Attenborough once described the elusive manul, what…

KATHMANDU — When residents of Pokhara Valley in western Nepal spot Egyptian vultures nesting on cliffs and trees, they sometimes misidentify them as crows and shoo them away. Sometimes they…

Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the…

KATHMANDU — The “vulture restaurant” in southern Nepal received a new lone diner on July 12, leaving the people serving the food puzzled. An American black vulture (Coragyps atratus), a…

A recent study confirms alarming declines in raptor populations in Kenya. Incidental poisoning is a major problem for vultures in particular, depriving ecosystems of the birds' vital role as scavengers.…

Vultures were a common sight across the Indian subcontinent until the late 1980s. But the excessive use of some veterinary drugs for cattle, which are toxic to the scavengers, and…

Around 1,000 vultures have been found dead in Guinea-Bissau in the last two weeks, believed to have been poisoned. The birds, almost all critically endangered hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus) were…

DURBAN, South Africa — Another mass vulture poisoning incident has ended the year on a sour note for Wildlife ACT rangers in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. Soon after…

Howick, SOUTH AFRICA – The first of at least five new “vulture safe zones” in Southern Africa are about to take off as private landowners and other partners join the…

New research suggests that mountain lions in the western United States play an outsize role in changing their surroundings, leading the authors of the study to suggest that the big…

In the Mara River in Kenya, fish die in the thousands every now and then. And the hippopotamus is to blame, a new study has found. Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) spend…

Lead bullet fragments in animal carcasses left behind by game hunters could be poisoning vultures in Botswana, according to a new study that echoes similar findings from elsewhere around the…

Predators help humans far more than they’re given credit for, despite the antagonistic nature of the relationship, according to a review of studies. “While predators and scavengers are a large…

We may cringe at the thought of diving our heads into a rotting carcass. But vultures relish such putrid meals. In fact, by removing carcasses, vultures prevent diseases from spreading…

Poisoned by cattle carcasses treated with Diclofenac, India’s vultures died by the millions in the 1990s. A captive breeding program is helping to save the once-ubiquitous birds, but the very…

Wolverine in the snow. Photo by: Bigstock. Arguably one of the toughest animals on Earth, the wolverine (Gulo gulo) may soon find itself protected under the U.S.'s Endangered Species Act…

The IUCN Red List releases its 2012 update, adding 247 species to its threatened categories. The king cobra has been evaluated by the IUCN Red List for the first time…

A mother and wolverine cubs photographed in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Photo by: Mark Packila/Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In the first X-Men film, the comic book character Wolverine is asked…

Everyone loves the beautiful animals, the playful orangutans, the rolly-polly pandas, the regal tigers, the wise elephants, the awe-inspiring whales, the silly penguins—and it shows. Aside from gracing calendars and…

Fish were not expected to be able to survive so deep, but scientists have captured footage of a new species of a scavenger-hunting snailfish swimming at an astounding 7,000 meters…