Why endangered vultures are gathering in an Ethiopian city

Feasting on the city edge

Four of the world's most threatened birds of prey are managing to survive by eating scraps in southwest Ethiopia.

Vultures are obligate scavengers, meaning they rely entirely on dead meat to survive. Out in wild grasslands, meals are scarce and hard to find. In growing towns, human rubbish gathers in big piles every single day. Field biologists wanted to understand how urban vulture populations use resources in Jimma City, how their counts shift across seasons, and what hazards they face.

Counting at the abattoir

To investigate, observers monitored five major feeding hubs. These hubs included two university waste areas, the town dumpsite, and the local abattoir, or animal slaughterhouse. Over seven months in 2022, field staff ran 960 fixed-radius point-count sessions, logging every bird seen inside a thirty-metre circle during a set time window. Alongside bird tallies, the team questioned 363 local households and 23 key community informants across three administrative kebeles, which are small Ethiopian neighbourhood zones.

Standard methods like these matter because they give wildlife managers solid numbers instead of rough guesses. By checking the exact same spots twice each week, observers can spot patterns in where birds feed and how their groups grow. In total, the team logged four of Ethiopia's eight vulture species.

Hooded vultures made up 57% of all birds seen, while white-backed vultures made up 38%. Both species are listed as Critically Endangered by wildlife experts. Rüppell’s griffon vultures formed 4% of sightings, and Endangered lappet-faced vultures added 1%. Together, the two top species made up nineteen out of every twenty birds logged.

The calendar made a huge difference to bird traffic. Total counts rose from 476 during the dry months between January and March up to 710 in the wet season between May and July. Hooded vultures averaged 264 sightings in dry weather, jumping to 408 when the rains began. The town dumpsite held between 40 and 54 birds across all four kinds, while the abattoir drew the highest single gathering of white-backed vultures at 58 birds, alongside 48 hooded and 46 Rüppell's griffon vultures.

A dangerous buffet

For these birds, open waste heaps act like an easy fast-food drive-through window: offering a rich meal, but surrounded by deadly town hazards. Yet the top risk in Jimma is not road traffic. Every single questioned household (100%) named electric shock from power cables as a direct danger to birds. Furthermore, 98% flagged tree clearing, 96% agreed that food shortages were an issue, and 91% warned that poison was a real hazard. In contrast, 99.4% disagreed that hunting or medicine trading took place, showing local people leave the birds alone.

There is an important limit to keep in mind with this data. The survey counted sightings at set feeding spots rather than marking birds with leg bands. Because of this, the final scores track how often birds were seen, rather than proving separate birds arrived each day.

What we still do not know

This study covered only five feeding spots in one city, not the whole region. Because scientists carried out no post-mortem tests on dead birds, the exact death toll from wire shocks remains unmeasured. Where these urban birds build their nests and whether their young survive to adulthood also remain open questions.