Rare birds given new home in UK

The vultures are being housed by the Hawk Conservancy Trust

Vultures rescued from an illegal consignment in Italy have been brought to Hampshire to be rehabilitated.

Twenty of the wild birds, part of 260 smuggled out of East Africa into Rome for illegal trade, have been brought to the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Andover.

Under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the UK will house the birds before their re-introduction to Africa.

The trust hopes the rare vultures will be part of a conservation programme.

BBC South's Inside Out team followed trust staff as they travelled to Italy to collect the birds.

'Devastating impact'

There, the birds had been housed for more than a year in Rome Zoo, after they were confiscated by Italian authorities.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust carries out management programmes for a number of species that are of conservation concern.

Ashley Smith, chief executive of the Hawk Conservancy Trust, told the BBC he was shocked when he first saw the birds.

"You cannot take this many birds from the wild and not have a devastating impact on the local wild population," Mr Smith said.

"Vulture populations have a very slow rate - on average only one out of every three breeding pairs will raise just one chick successfully each year."

Threatened birds

All the vultures are being temporarily re-homed across Europe.

Dr Mark Anderson, nature conservation scientist for the Northern Cape, South Africa, said: "Vultures are one of the most threatened guilds of birds in Africa, with numbers in some regions plummeting during the past few decades.

"The harvesting of vultures, whether for trade or traditional medicine, is also impacting on the populations of some vulture species."