Left: Delegates at the launch of the SADC Vulture Conservation Strategy 2025–2035. Right: Cape Vulture soaring above cliffs in southern Africa, symbolising regional conservation success

The 26^th of August 2025 marks the day that the southern African region took a significant step forward in protecting its disappearing avian scavengers.

Working closely with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and BirdLife International, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) officially launched the SADC Vulture Conservation Strategy & Action Plan, a 10-year regional framework aimed at reversing the catastrophic declines of vulture populations across southern Africa.

This strategy represents a unified commitment by range states to address shared threats, coordinate data and field actions, engage stakeholders across sectors, and embed vulture conservation as a cross-border ecological priority.

Why this strategy matters

Vultures play a vital role in African ecosystems, as efficient scavengers, they remove carcasses, limiting the spread of disease and controlling populations of other scavengers (such as feral dogs) that may pose risks to wildlife, livestock and people. The precipitous decline of vulture species in Southern Africa thus rings alarm bells not only for biodiversity, but for ecosystem health and human-wildlife coexistence.
Key threats across the region include:

• Intentional and unintentional poisoning of carcasses (often from poaching retaliation, livestock-wildlife conflict, or veterinary drugs).
• Electrocution and collision with energy infrastructure (power lines, wind turbines) as vultures soar widely and utilise large home ranges.
• Habitat loss, fragmentation and disturbance of nesting or roosting sites (cliffs, large trees) and changes in carcass availability.
  Without coordinated regional action, national or piecemeal efforts risk being undermined by cross-border threats, migratory behaviour, and ecological connectivity. The new SADC strategy recognises that vultures don’t respect national boundaries.

Outline of the Strategy

The Strategy & Action Plan is structured around four main strategic pillars:

1. Reducing Threats faced by Vultures – identifying, prioritising and addressing the major direct causes of mortality and decline, including poisoning, infrastructure, and habitat loss, with specific targets of reducing poisoning-related vulture mortalities by 75% by 2035.
2. Enhancing Data, Monitoring and Conservation Efforts – improving baseline information on vulture populations, movements, threats, monitoring change over time, and sharing data among countries.
3. Stakeholder Engagement, Awareness & Behaviour Change – involving communities, wildlife managers, the energy sector, the veterinary sector, private landowners, and the wider public, so that vulture conservation is understood and supported.
4. Governance, Implementation and Coordination – establishing a regional steering group, aligning national policies and legislative frameworks, ensuring resources and capacity, tracking progress through measurable targets.

Over the 10 years ending 2035, each country will develop national roll-out plans aligned with the regional framework, enabling cross-border synergies. This will include information on poisoning hotspots, energy-infrastructure corridors and migratory routes. The strategy aligns with global frameworks such as the Convention on Migratory Species and the Kunming‑Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Although there are significant complexities around many of these targets and objectives, their inclusion will guide a significant amount of work in future, as well as assist in creating financial and institutional capacity to tackle these as a collective undertaking.

Countries included and scope

The strategy targets 12 vulture-range states within the 16-member SADC region. These are: Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

These countries collectively host a significant portion of many of these species’ global range, and species like the Cape Vulture are completely reliant on the SADC region for their range.

Benefit to vulture conservation over the next ten years

With this strategy in place, the anticipated benefits over the coming decade include:

• Reduced mortality and improved survival: By tackling the chief causes of vulture deaths (poisoning, infrastructure, habitat loss) in a coordinated manner, we hope to slow or reverse population decline trajectories.
• Better data and evidence base: With improved monitoring and regional data sharing, conservation practitioners will be able to identify where interventions are most needed, measure progress and adapt actions accordingly.
• Enhanced policy and legislative alignment: National laws, energy-sector standards and veterinary regulations will increasingly reflect vulture-conservation priorities. This coordination will reduce loopholes and ensure consistent protection across borders.
• Stronger stakeholder networks and community engagement: With local communities, wildlife managers, power utilities and veterinarians engaged, the strategy fosters behaviour change and broad buy-in, all of which are essential for sustainable impact.
• Increased funding, capacity and partnership: A regional strategy attracts greater visibility, encourages donor investment, fosters cross-country learning and boosts institutional capacity at national and local levels.
• Ecosystem and human-community benefits: Protecting vultures means safeguarding their role as nature’s clean-up crew, reducing carcass decomposition risks, limiting disease spread, supporting livestock and wildlife health, and maintaining ecosystem functioning.
• A measurable “turnaround” by 2035: By setting clear timelines and measurable milestones, the strategy offers the practical possibility of reversing the vulture crisis, by restoring populations, securing safe habitat and reducing threat levels across the region.

The launch of the SADC Vulture Conservation Strategy & Action Plan marks a watershed for the conservation of these highly threatened species in southern Africa. With the strategy in place, we must now help drive national implementation, integrate vulture conservation into sectoral policies (energy, agriculture, land use), support community-level action and track impact rigorously. The next decade is critical. If we succeed, we will secure a future in which vultures continue to soar across our skies, playing their indispensable ecological role. If we delay, the window of opportunity may close.