'One of the most successful wildlife comeback stories': The Alps lost its vultures - then it got them back

Decades after its release into the wild, a super-ageing, bone-crunching vulture called Balthazar reveals a major conservation success. In the autumn of 2025, wildlife experts in the French Alps made a surprising discovery: a frail, weakened bearded vulture found lying on the ground turned out to be Balthazar, a bird released under a conservation programme in 1988, who had vanished from observations. Having been presumed dead, at over 37 years old, he is in fact the oldest bearded vulture ever to have been recorded in the wild. Over his long life, Balthazar witnessed the return of his own species to Alpine skies and cliffs, as bearded vultures have soared back from local extinction. Bearded vultures are majestic, cliff-nesting birds with wing spans of 2.5m (8.2ft) or more, about the size of a flying door. Their diet is one of their many intriguing features: they are thought to be the only animal that is ossivorous, meaning, they feed mainly on bones. The Spanish name for bearded vulture, quebrantahuesos (bone-breaker), in fact hints at the complex acrobatics this diet involves. The birds scavenge bones from carcasses, then drop them onto rocks from a great height to smash them into