Scientists place the bearded vulture in the family Accipitridae, the family of eagles, hawks and kites. As of November 2026, the IUCN estimates 1,675 to 6,700 mature bearded vultures in the world, and the trend is decreasing, while the Peregrine Fund lists the bearded vulture as Near Threatened worldwide but Vulnerable in Europe.

The bearded vulture was completely gone from the Alps by the beginning of the 20th century, and in 1978, experts from five countries decided to use young bearded vultures from zoos for the Alps project instead of birds taken from the wild.

For releases in the Alps, young zoo-bred birds are taken at about 90 to 100 days old, moved to a protected site in the mountains and released with one or two other young vultures. Each released bird is carefully matched to a release site to give the small wild population the best genetic boost.

Releases began in Austria in 1986, then France in 1987, Switzerland in 1991, and Italy and southern France in 1994, and each released bearded vulture in the Alps is marked with foot rings and a bleached feather pattern so people can tell birds apart.

As of November 2026, about 88 percent of released bearded vultures survive their first year, and after the first year, the yearly survival rate of released Alpine bearded vultures rises to 96 percent.

In 1997, about 80 years after the bird vanished from the Alps, a chick hatched in the wild flew for the first time in Haute-Savoie, and scientists collect moulted feathers after the breeding season to learn which birds breed and to identify wild-hatched young.

As of November 2026, the record says that between 1978 and 2016, biologists reared 488 young bearded vultures in captivity. By 2015, 204 young bearded vultures had been released in the Alps, and 148 chicks had hatched in the wild, and the estimate for the Alps in 2015 was 220 to 250 bearded vultures.

As of November 2026, a 2023 magazine report put the number of bearded vulture breeding pairs across Europe at about 465, and 44 chicks left the nest in 2021, a record for the reintroduction program. The Vulture Conservation Foundation runs a captive-breeding network of 40 groups, including zoos, nonprofits and government partners.

The wild Alpine bearded vultures have little genetic diversity, so more releases are needed to avoid inbreeding. As of November 2026, collisions with power lines and disturbance from growing human development also threaten the bearded vulture, and the birds have disappeared from parts of their range, partly because of illegal poison baits set for other animals, loss of habitat and disturbance at breeding sites.

Bearded vultures perform sky dances, rising to great heights and diving back down, twisting and rolling past the nesting site. A pair builds up to five nests on sheltered ledges or in small caves on the mountainside, and bearded vultures older than 30 years are not uncommon in the wild.

Words to know

• Accipitridae: eagle family
• genetic: about inherited traits
• inbreeding: mating of relatives
• moulted: shed
• captivity: life in zoos