Six griffon vultures killed with banned pesticide in the Lesach Valley

In the border region between Carinthia and East Tyrol, a total of seven griffon vultures have been found under unexplained circumstances since 16 April 2026.

Six of the birds died, while one bird was nursed back to health at the rescue and care station at Landskron Castle and subsequently released back into the wild.

BirdLife Austria announced that toxicological analyses by the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich identified poisoning with carbofuran as the cause of death in all five animals for which examinations had been completed. This nerve poison has been banned in the EU since 2008 and is lethal to birds and mammals even in the smallest doses.

«Because so many animals were affected in a relatively small area and a natural cause for such a mass die-off seemed highly implausible, the suspicion of poisoning was on the table and we immediately notified the Carinthia State Criminal Police Office,» explained Johannes Hohenegger, a bird of prey expert at BirdLife Austria.

BirdLife and the WWF speak of a targeted poison attack. «Anyone who lays out carbofuran knowingly accepts the death of protected wild animals. Seven affected griffon vultures in a single valley represent a serious case of wildlife crime. Now it must be clarified, without any gaps, who is behind this cowardly poison attack,» demanded WWF species conservation expert Christina Wolf-Petre.

The investigations are now intended to clarify which animals the laid-out bait may originally have been aimed at. In comparable carbofuran cases in other parts of Austria, the WWF and BirdLife repeatedly suspected a background in the hobby hunting milieu: the typical pattern is killed animals that are laid out as prepared poison bait in order to kill unwanted predators that compete with hobby hunting for the same prey. As long as no perpetrator has been identified, this remains a suspicion that must be prosecuted under criminal law.

Not an isolated case in Austria: according to BirdLife, nearly 400 illegal killings of birds have been documented over the past nine years, including 81 protected birds of prey that died from poisoning. These figures come from the 2026 Wildlife Crime Report, which BirdLife and WWF Austria published shortly before the Lesachtal case. Anyone with information about the crime is asked to report it to the Carinthia State Criminal Police Office.