06/09/2026
A major win for vultures across Southern Africa! Yesterday, nine conservation organisations launched the Vulture Safe Zone Alliance — a groundbreaking partnership to protect one of nature's most vital (and most threatened) cleanup crews.
Summary Post: Vultures are in crisis. Over the last 50 years, African vulture populations have crashed by 80–97%, with six of the continent's eleven species now classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered. Poisoning, powerline collisions, and habitat loss have pushed these essential scavengers to the brink.
Yesterday in Harare, conservation leaders from six Southern African countries came together to change that trajectory.
The new Vulture Safe Zone Alliance (VSZA) unites BirdLife International and its partners, Raptors Botswana, and The Endangered Wildlife Trust to create safer landscapes for vultures — not just inside national parks, but across communal lands, farms, and private conservancies where these birds actually live, feed, and fly.
With over 2 million hectares already designated as Vulture Safe Zones, the Alliance is building a connected network of protected spaces across borders. Because vultures don't recognize borders — and neither should our conservation efforts.
The newly launched Vulture Safe Zone Guidelines give land users, communities, and governments a shared framework to reduce threats and help vultures safely move, breed, and scavenge across the region.
This is what regional collaboration looks like.
