European vulture populations are closely monitored with several methods:
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Rings with different colours and / or codes are used to identify an individual
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Griffon Vultures are additionally equipped with plastic wingtags
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Some birds are equipped with transmitters, which provided very specific and useful information on their behaviour
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Each released bird gets some feathers bleached so that it is individually identifiable from far away
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Especially the reintroduced Alpine bearded vulture population is closely followed by an extensive network called International Bearded Vulture Monitoring (IBM).
With all this data, it becomes clear how a population evolves, how successful breeding pairs are, where they forage and what they eat.