August 6
There have been reports from across the French Pyrenees this year of a radical change in the way the region’s vultures behave. A programme to incinerate animal carcasses in Spain has deprived “les vautours” of food, causing them to become aggressive. Where once they scavenged, now they hunt, according to farmers.

A cattle breeder in Ilharre in the French Basque country, said that in May he saw dozens of birds circle and kill a cow. “There were so many of them that they covered the entire meadow,” he said. “Then I saw the cow slumped on the ground in the middle being devoured.

But vultures may never have been hungrier. A 2006 European Union directive forced Spain to ban the practice of leaving carcasses in open trenches. In upper Aragon, on the French border, they ate an estimated 8,000kg (17,600lb) of rotting meat every day. These carcasses are now burnt and Aragon’s 10,000 or so vultures must look elsewhere. In June, 200 were spotted in Belgium, where bird-lovers put 200kg of pork out for them “to build up their strength” for the journey back to Aragon.

Didier Hervé, director of the Upper Béarn Heritage Institute, said that panic was spreading. “A mother told me that a flock of vultures settled next to her by the village fountain when she was with her children,” he said.

Jean-Pierre Pommiès, a shepherd and mountain guide, reported an attack after taking tourists into the mountains. “The vultures were chasing one of my sheep and pecking its leg,” he said. “I chased them away but if I’d been five minutes later they would have cleaned up. They say the shepherds are inventing these stories, but this time there were 30 tourists who witnessed what happened.”
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Moral of this story:

Tell the Spanish government to re-open the law of leaving animal corpses in trenches, as it'll make the vultures happy.

Yikes - that would be completely terrifying. Vultures are big.

And what's wrong with leaving the carcasses for them? That's what vultures are for.

Whenever we interfere with nature and it,s purpose it WILL come back to bite us in our collective A$$E$! When are we ever going to learn this very simple lesson?

I guess they picked a fight with the wrong species, this one fights back!

Problem is that now the government will probably classify them as dangerous and order them shot...

and thus began the end of the world...

Sounds like because they a have been dumping carcasses so long they have created a population boom among the vultures. Now they have cut them off their food they are just doing what they have to do to survive poor things. I wonder how long before they kill some kid.

Absolutely!

I may be wrong, but I was always under the impression that vultures went for dead meat rather than killing themselves. This is very disturbing

Sheesh! That would scare me to death. Maybe by NOT feeding them, they are trying to limit the vulture population? I mean if I saw 10,000 vultures circling a certain area all the time, I'd want to reduce the population considerable as well.