In July this year, conservationists from North Carolina Zoo in the U.S. and the Grumeti Fund in Tanzania went searching for a white-backed vulture in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park that had been tagged a few weeks earlier. Tracking data suggested the bird had died. The team traveled off-road to the southwestern edge of the park, accompanied by rangers from the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA). Upon arriving at the bird's location, they came across a gruesome scene: 108 vultures had been sorted into rows, missing their heads and feet. For the third time in 16 months, endangered vultures in the Serengeti had been poisoned, their missing body parts likely destined for the black market. It wasn't the frst time they'd seen something like this. A few months earlier, 109 dead vultures were found close to the same site, and nearly 200 more in February 2023. Together, these three incidents have claimed the lives of around 400 vultures - a "huge" number for the slow-breeding birds. "These poisonings were very targeted to kill vultures, and they had [taken] every single head," says Corinne Kendall, curator of conservation and research at North Carolina Zoo, which leads a vulture conservation project in Tanzania.