The reintroduction of birds to the wild is going on. Young vultures born in breeding stations and zoos are released every year at four different sites in the Alps: Swiss National Park (Graubünden), Haute-Savoie (France), Mercantour-Argentera (France-Italy) and Austria. Despite the dispersal capacity of this raptor, young vultures come back often where they are born (or released) when they are adult. Therefore, new reintroduction sites have been defined. For example in 2010, in Switzerland three youg vulture have been released in a new site in canton St-Gall.
The release efforts will cease only when a sufficient self-sustainable population (i.e. several regular breeding pairs) will have been established in the overall alpine range.
Up to now the project is a success story 50 natural births have been documented in the Alps over the past years. One of the first birds born in the wild (in 1998) bred in Italy in 2005: This marks a new phase in the reintroduction programme!
