Critically Endangered
Hooded Vulture
Necrosyrtes monachus
The hooded vulture is an Old World vulture in the order Accipitriformes, that also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks.
Appearance
The hooded vulture is a typical vulture, with a head that is usually pinkish-white, but flushes red when agitated, and a grey to black "hood". It has fairly uniform dark brown body plumage. It has broad wings for soaring and short tail feathers.
Published measurements include mass about 120.
Range and habitat
Although hooded vultures have relatively small home ranges, they are widely distributed across Africa. It occurs in Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Niger and Nigeria in West Africa. In East Africa it is found in Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Somalia; in southern Africa it has been recorded in northern Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa. It is native to sub-Saharan Africa, where it has a widespread distribution with populations in southern, East and West Africa.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
It breeds in a stick nest in trees (often palms) in much of Africa south of the Sahara, laying one egg.
In crisis
Although it remains a common species with a stable population in the lower region of Casamance, some areas of The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, other regions such as Dakar, Senegal, show more than 85% losses in population over the last 50 years. Threats include poisoning, hunting, loss of habitat and collisions with electricity infrastructure, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has rated its conservation status as "critically endangered" in their latest assessment (2022). While the populations in Gambia are relatively stable, it is declining almost everywhere else in its range at an average rate of 83% (range 64–93%) over 53 years (3 generations).
Its total population is estimated at a maximum of 197 000 individuals. The species has been uplisted from its previous IUCN status of endangered to critically endangered, since the species is going through a very steep decline in population, owing to various factors among them poisoning, hunting, habitat loss and degradation of habitat.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Hooded Vulture is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Hooded vulture, Wikidata item Q177386. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
