BOISE, Idaho — Vultures may not be the prettiest birds, but the role they play in the environment more than makes up for their looks.
Saturday marked International Vulture Awareness Day, and the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise spent the day celebrating the scavengers.
The World Center for Birds of Prey is one of the education branches of The Peregrine Fund, an international conservation organization that works to conserve birds of prey worldwide.
"Education is the best way to help conserve birds of prey," Jadn Soper, raptor specialist at the World Center for Birds of Prey said. "Because us helping to work together to save all of our birds of prey in our own backyards is how we're going to help raptors in the future."
Out of the 23 different species of vultures, 16 species are threatened or at-risk of going extinct.
While the bald birds often get a bad rap, Soper says they help clean up the entire environment.
"Turkey vultures have extremely acidic stomach acids, and so when they're cleaning up a carcass, they're killing any diseases or viruses that carcass has," Soper said. "So, when we see cases of vulture declines, we actually see increases of diseases in the environment - and with humans."
The World Center for Birds of Prey houses two species of vultures, with three California Condors on display who are part of their captive breeding program to help make genetics of wild condor populations more robust.
The center also has Lucy, a turkey vulture - one of the more common vulture species in North America.
"The best thing we can do for vultures is change public perception of them by having everybody understand how important they are to the environment, and to our health," Soper said. "And everybody getting to see that bald really is beautiful."
The Peregrine Fund has been working across the globe to stop different vulture declines.
"We're working very hard in East Africa to help save vultures, specifically in the Maasai Mara in Kenya," Soper said. "We're also working with Andean Condors in South America. We're also working with California Condors right here in the states, helping reintroduce them into the wild. Having healthy vulture populations means healthy human populations."
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