Save Israel's Birds of Prey

Exciting news for Birds of Prey at the Zoo.

Plans are being finalized for the building of a new exhibit of lappet-faced vultures (Torgos tracheliotos).

The Lappet-faced Vulture is classified as Regionally Extinct (RE) in Israel as early as 1989 and is currently classified as endangered (EN) on the IUCN Red List.

Up until the late 1940s / early 1950s, dozens of these old-world vultures, the largest raptor in the region, could be found from the northern Negev and the center of the Judean Desert in the north to the Eilat mountains, and were also common in the Arabian Peninsula.

The last thirty years saw a drastic decrease in the species' population in all the areas of its distribution, and it is estimated that today only 6,530 adult birds remain worldwide, most of them is sub-Saharan throughout Africa and the Middle East.

The main causes of their extinction in Israel were the hunting and robbing of their nests (exporting chicks to Europe in the 1970s), poisoning, and the disturbance of their habitat with the development of agriculture in the Arava desert region.

In 2021, a lappet-faced vulture was observed in nature for the first time in years at the Hai-Bar Yotveta Nature Reserve, causing much excitement amongst avian experts.

In 2022, an 11-year old male vulture arrived at the Zoo from Great Britain to acclimatize before joining a captive breeding colony in the Negev as part of the Spreading Wings project, a collaboration of the Nature and Parks Authority, the Society for the Protection of Nature, and the Electric Company.