<em>By
Jenyva Turner, Animal Keeper IV
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Colorado Springs, CO</em>

Quick! Name five animals that people want to see when visiting the zoo!

Let me guess, vultures were not on the list, right? That was the challenge I faced in 2009 when my conservation project, Cape Vulture (<em>Gyps coprotheres</em>) Conservation in South Africa, was chosen for Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s (CMZ) Quarters for Conservation (Q4C)* program. How could I put vultures on the (zoo) map and help guests to appreciate the value of vultures and inspire them to vote for vultures when many other more charismatic species were available to choose from?

One easy way was to capitalize on the birds there in front of guests and focus more on our vultures during keeper talks and tours and our Wings of Africa bird show. Guests can even get up-close to our vultures and feed them during the show, creating quite the Defining Moment! The vultures are part of our show finale as they hiss and cackle and tackle each other for knuckle bones, wowing guests as they act like, well… vultures!

The second, not-so-easy way to help put vultures on the map was to create a special day just for them. Therefore, I decided to speak with Kerri Wolter of The Vulture Programme in South Africa, whose work and research CMZ was supporting through Q4C, and see if she would be interested in celebrating vultures on the same day, thereby creating an “international” vulture awareness day (even if it involved only two organizations in two countries). We were both very excited about the possibilities, so Kerri approached her colleagues at the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) whom she already worked with in holding a local annual Vulture Awareness Day in South Africa.  EWT said we could hold our event the same day as they were speaking to farmers all across South Africa, helping spread the word about vulture restaurants, vulture colony monitoring and the effects of poisoning. So we set our sights on September 5, 2009 to be our first-ever International Vulture Awareness Day.

Word about this International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD) quickly spread as Kerri Wolter and Andre Botha of EWT decided to invite other vulture enthusiasts and experts around the world. Soon Bird Life- South Africa, The Hawk Conservancy Trust, Bird Life- International, and World Wildlife Fund - Pakistan were on board for September 5th! I was particularly excited about conservationists in Pakistan, India and Nepal joining us as the Asian vulture crisis was a huge reason why I submitted a project focused on vulture conservation for Q4C in the first place. Most people had not heard about what was going on in Asia a few years ago regarding the massive decline in the vulture population and I wanted to help bring that crisis to light and in some small way, help prevent that same crisis from occurring in Africa.

I was getting so excited about the response from well-known and respected organizations that I decided to send out invitation emails to other national and international organizations focused on vulture or avian conservation. I contacted Scott Tidmus of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and with his help, as well as the help of everyone else overseas, the concept of IVAD exploded! We developed a logo (so we could be all official) and set up a website where participating organizations could sign-up and share their events with others. I was moved beyond words at the response from people all over the world! On September 5, 2009, over 125 organizations around the world celebrated vultures together!

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2006" title="vulture1" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/vulture1.jpg" alt="vulture1" width="450" height="189" />

<em><strong>Official 2011 International Vulture Awareness Day Logo</strong></em>

The IVAD event at CMZ was a huge success! Kids could make vulture puppets, they could make enrichment for our zoo vultures, they could look for wild turkey vultures flying overhead, make a vulture nest, fly like a vulture, the list goes on and on… but the station that was the biggest hit was the vulture stomach juice station! Now, in order to make this experiment totally believable I would have needed to use hydrochloric acid or battery acid, but considering battery acid and kids don’t really mix, I resorted to vinegar! In this fun little experiment kids could learn about why vultures can eat things that would make us sick and why they are such effective scavengers. There was also a “scavenger” hunt where guests could go around the zoo looking for the bright red vulture fact signs and answer trivia questions for a chance to meet and feed our vultures. It was such a fun day (for me especially!) and whether they wanted to or not, no guest could leave the zoo that day without thinking at least once about vultures. That was my goal.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2007" title="vulture2" src="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/wp-content/uploads/vulture2.jpg" alt="vulture2" width="720" height="481" />

Comparing arm span with a Cape vulture wing span (<em>photo by Jenyva Turner</em>)

<strong>Want to read more about International Vulture Awareness Day?  For this and many more fascinating articles every month, see Animal Keepers’ Forum.  AKF is available only by being a member of AAZK.<a href="http://aecetia.net/gws/aazk/join/"> JOIN NOW! </a></strong>