Skip to main content

African Hill Safari Lodge

Menu

A Meal With a Mission: Inside Plumari’s Vulture Restaurant

A Meal With a Mission: Inside Plumari's Vulture Restaurant

How African Hills Safari Lodge & Spa is helping protect the endangered Cape vulture, one safe meal at a time.

  • African Hills Media Team
  • Blog
Vultures don’t get the same fanfare as a lion sighting or an elephant up close. They circle quietly overhead, easy to overlook, even easier to misunderstand. But the Cape vulture is endangered, and the threats against it are almost entirely man-made: poisoning and harmful cultural beliefs have pushed its numbers into decline across the region. At Plumari Private Reserve, we decided overlooking it wasn’t an option. Let’s tell you what we’re doing about it.

The Vulture Restaurant

The idea is simple, and that’s exactly why it works. We’ve created a “vulture restaurant” at Plumari, a feeding site where we place safe, uncontaminated carcasses for the colony to feed on. No poison, no risk, just a reliable meal they can count on.

That reliability matters more than it might sound. A steady, safe food source improves a vulture’s chances of survival, and it gives breeding pairs the strength they need to raise the next generation successfully. Every carcass we place is small on its own, but stacked together over months and years, it’s a meaningful step toward securing the future of this remarkable species.

It’s not the kind of conservation story with a dramatic photo opportunity. It’s quieter than that, a meal at a time, a season at a time. But it’s working, and we’re proud to be part of it.

Want to see Plumari’s conservation work up close during your stay? Let’s plan your visit at africanhillslodge.co.za