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It can be hard to get people to care about protecting vultures. They aren’t exactly cute and cuddly, and their diet of dead animals doesn’t help.
Conservationists hope a vulture photography competition can help improve the public’s perception of the animals, which play an important ecological role by disposing of carrion.
“People tend to think they’re ugly,” says André Botha, Africa Projects Manager at the Hawk Conservancy Trust, one of the groups behind International Vulture Awareness Day, which organizes the contest. “If you don’t like it, you won’t conserve it.”
The Vulture Interactions photography contest, running for its second year, announced its results on July 20. The winning photos show various vulture species in action, from the bearded vulture, Europe’s rarest vulture, to the California condor, of which there are only about 600 birds left in existence.
