Black Vulture Management Program Martinsburg Plant

About the Program
The Argos facility is a cement plant near Martinsburg, West Virginia, which produces limestone and a variety of cement products. Quarries and other operational and geographic features in the area have attracted a large population of the protected Black Vulture to the site. Argos is working with the United States Air Force, private contractors and USDA/USFWS to better understand the habitat preferences, flight patterns and migratory behavior of the vultures in an attempt to better manage the local population as well as minimize potential strikes with aircraft locally and regionally.

Practices and Impacts

• Argos Cement developed a partnership with USDA - Wildlife Services, the Air National Guard and Conservation Science Global to implement a mark-resight study.
• Wildlife Services placed patagial wing tags on 448 black vultures in 2018 through 2019 at nine locations in West Virginia and used the data to analyze habitat preferences, movement and flight characteristics.
• Additionally, 10 cellular GPS transmitters were placed on vultures and data were recorded from May to December 2019.
• A 30-minute documentary, entitled "Unintentional Experts," was created and shared with several public broadcasting networks in surrounding states (North Carolina, Massachusetts, Maine and Washington).
• The data collected is being shared with other researches in an emerging collaboration focused on black vultures.