Vultures are nature’s clean-up crew, and they’re not just important to their ecosystems and environments – but vital. A vulture’s natural habitats are places of hot climates such as the desert or the savannah – places where dead carcasses would otherwise rot and decay without vultures to clean them up, whether they died of illness or old age or as the unfortunate victim as a predator’s dinner. One reason why vultures are so necessary to these environments is because they are scavengers, which means they see these carcasses and tuck in for a meal, cleaning up the meat that, if left there, would have become rife with bacteria and disease. This is exactly why we need our vultures – they keep our environments clean.

So why don’t we talk about this like we do a lot of other endangered species? Similarly, to sharks, I believe that people have a lot of negative misconceptions about vultures and in order to save them, we have to change those first. Vultures are fundamental to many of our world’s ecosystems and we simply can’t continue to believe that just because we don’t find them cute and sweet like pandas, that they aren’t worth saving.

My name is Clare Callaghan and I’m really passionate about vultures and raising awareness and support for their conservation. Because of this, I’ve decided to walk the distance of a marathon over the days between now (11th August) and the start of school (2^nd September) and I need your help! If you can, please sponsor my walk and share this page to others so I can raise money for this cause. All the money raised will be donated to Vulture Awareness (part of the Hawk Conservancy Trust) to aid in their fight to conserve vultures!