LIFE Pro Bearded Vulture (LIFE 20 NAT/ES/001363) is a transnational project undertaken by the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture (FCQ), the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge of the Government of Spain and the Association Nature and Man of Portugal (ANYH).

It is funded by the European Union’s LIFE financial instrument and is being implemented in Natura 2000 sites.

Its objective is to guarantee the long-term conservation of the bearded vulture in Europe.

Since the late 1980s, the Bearded Vulture population in Spain has been monitored in detail and more than 100 articles of research have been published, which has generated a reliable knowledge body for the management of the species. Several conservation actions have allowed the recovery of its population in the Pyrenees, with an annual growth rate of 3.3%. In 2018 there were 177 pairs on both slopes, and a total of 1,026 individuals.

However, despite the good conditions for the species in other neighbouring mountain systems, and the efforts made for its natural expansion, the Bearded Vulture population was relegated to the Pyrenees. This situation contrasted with that of the other vultures, which in addition to recovering their populations also recovered a large part of their former area of distribution, including Portugal.

The confinement of the Bearded Vulture to the Pyrenees has conditioned its viability in the medium to long term, so that both the Spanish Strategy for its conservation and the EU Action Plan include, among their objectives, the expansion of the species to its former area of distribution, with the aim of creating a meta-population scenario that reduces its risk of extinction.

Accordingly, two reintroduction projects have been carried out in Spain. The first in Cazorla (LIFE04 NAT/E/000056), initiated in 2004, has managed to establish 5 breeding pairs (2022). The other, developed by the FCQ and initiated in 2013, has achieved its reintroduction in the Picos de Europa (LIFE/NAT/ES/000322), where there are currently 3 breeding pairs (2022).

Outside the Pyrenees the situation continues to be critical in Corsica and Greece, while in the Alps it has been reintroduced, and today there are 76 pairs (2022). To avoid the isolation of the Alpine population, a reintroduction project was started in 2014 in the French Massif Central (LIFE14 NAT/FR/000050), halfway between the Alps and the Pyrenees, in order to favour genetic exchange between the two populations.