White-backed Vulture

Appearance

The white-backed vulture is a typical vulture, with only down feathers on the head and neck, very broad wings and short tail feathers. The adult's whitish back contrasts with the otherwise dark plumage. The white-backed vulture is an Old World vulture in the family Accipitridae, that also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks.

This is a medium-sized vulture. Its body mass is 4.2 to 7.2 kg (9.3–15.9 lb), it is 78 to 98 cm (31 to 39 in) long and has a 1.96 to 2.25 m (6 ft 5 in to 7 ft 5 in) wingspan.

Published measurements include mass about 214.

Range and habitat

The white-backed vulture occurs from Senegal, Gambia and Mali in the west, throughout the Sahel region to Ethiopia and Somalia in the east, through East Africa into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa in the south. It is the most widespread and common vulture in Africa with an estimated range of 24,300,000 km2 (9,400,000 sq mi), but has undergone rapid population declines in recent years.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

White-backed vultures feed in groups and are often one of the first vulture species to arrive at a carcass. White-backed vultures nest in trees.

In 2007, there were 73 breeding pairs nesting in the area with a minimum density of 14.9 nests per 100 square kilometers. By 2017, this declined to 22 breeding pairs nesting and 4.49 nests per 100 square kilometers.

In crisis

When it was first assessed in 1988 it was classified as a Least concern species owing to a large range and population. It was reassessed from a Least Concern to Near Threatened species in the 2007 IUCN Red List after the beginnings of a major decline were noticed. In 2012, more information was available about population trends, and the estimates suggested that within the next three generations the white-backed vulture would decrease by 50%.

Consequently it was added to the list of Endangered species. In October 2015, it was further uplisted to Critically Endangered because the decline had reached a magnitude that put the vulture at an extreme risk of extinction.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

White-backed 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 White-backed Vulture, Wikidata item Q281874. 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.