A British cosmetics company is donating EUR 62,000 to the programme for the reintroduction of black vultures to the Bulgarian portion of the Rhodope Mountain.

Black vultures were a common sight here once but lack of food, poisoning, unsecured power lines and other adverse factors have made them extinct. In our day there is just one bird colony in the Balkans and it is in Greece.

To bring black vultures back to the country an aviary is to be built as temporary shelter, and locations will be selected for the birds’ release in nature. The birds will arrive next year from Spain, as it is the country with the biggest black vulture population in Europe. The programme’s ultimate objective is to restore the entire food chain in which vultures are nature’s garbage disposers.

Among all other kinds of vultures, black vultures are the biggest in size.