Over the weekend with a three-day Vulture Festival Rewilding Rhodopes team marked the successful completion of the LIFE project “Conservation of black and griffon vultures in the Rhodope Mountains”. The event was attended by more than 500 people, including student classes from Plovdiv and guests from Sofia, Madjarovo and the surrounding area.

Ιncreasing the Griffon Vulture population in the Eastern Rhodopes, restoring the red and fallow deer in the region and creating the first anti-poison dog unit team — these are just some of the results of LIFE-RE Vultures. Over the last five years, this project successfully implemented various conservation actions to conserve Cinereous and Griffon Vultures in the Rhodopes.

In the Kompsatos River Valley, the Thracian Meteora dominate the landscape from every viewpoint. Above the town of Iasmos, in the Rodopi prefecture, the Kompsatos Valley spreads up to the Greek-Bulgarian borders. The only activities in the Valley that persist are livestock farming and silviculture. Most residents are occupied with free grazing of livestock near the flatland settlements during the winter and around their mountain villages in the summer. Only a handful of people reside up to these ruined villages.

Another baby bison was born in the Eastern Rhodopes. The new addition is male and was born in the second half of May and now the herd has reached  12 animals. This is the fourth animal to be born free south of the Danube in centuries since bison were released into the wild in the Rhodopes in 2019.

This year vulture experts and the rewilding team in the Rhodope Moun-tains counted 72 hatched vultures within the regular monitoring pro-gramme of the only indigenous griffon vulture population in Bulgaria.

A new partnership between Rewilding Europe and German shoemaker Wildling Shoes will see rewilding efforts scaled up in Europe, generating wide-ranging benefits for nature and people. The collaboration will kick off with support for rewilding actions in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area.

Rewilding enthusiasts and nature lovers in Bulgaria and around the world can now get even closer to the work of the Rewilding Rhodopes team, with the launch of the new Rewilding Rhodopes website.

During the days when the cinereous vultures have been starting their incubation in Dadia forest, a severe poisoning incident took place in close proximity to their breeding sites.

A total of 107 pairs of Griffon vultures were counted during the regular monitoring of the population of the species along the Arda River valley, Eastern Rhodopes by experts of the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB).

A newly installed live webcam in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area is now providing online viewers with a rare glimpse into the lives of Bulgarian Griffon vultures. Located in the centre of a major Griffon vulture colony, the webcam offers a close-up view of a nest, together with its feathered visitors.