Tourist, 52, plunges 1,000ft to her death in the Pyrenees and is then devoured by VULTURES before rescuers can reach her



Carrion-eaters swooped on the woman after she fell from the Pic de Pista

Only bones, clothes and shoes were left, local police reported

Fear of the protected birds is growing and farmers want right to shoot them

EC ruling means their traditional prey, dead livestock, must now be burned



The body of a 52-year-old woman who fell to her death in the Pyrenees was devoured by Griffon vultures before emergency services were able to retrieve it.

Furious locals are demanding that authorities take action against the endangered carrion-eaters after they left only the woman's bones, clothes and shoes for burial.

Fear of the birds has been growing in recent years, which have reportedly also begun attacking live animals since a European edict that dead livestock must not be left in the fields.

Protected: A Griffon vulture in flight. The body of a 52-year-old woman who fell 1,000ft to her death in the Pyrenees was devoured by the carrion eaters before emergency services were able to retrieve it

Farmers want to be given the right to shoot the protected birds, which they say have started to prey on live sheep and cows.

The campaign is gathering pace after the latest incident, in which a woman slipped and fell down a 1,000ft slope on the Pic de Pista after taking a short cut while walking with two friends.

Major Didier Pericou of the gendarmerie told The Times that they believed the woman died in the fall, but added that there was little left of her by the time a search party found her body.

'When we first went out in the helicopter looking for the body, we saw numerous vultures without realising what they were doing,' he said.

'There were only bones, clothes and shoes left on the ground.

'They took 40 to 50 minutes to eat the body.'

'Conservation issue': An EC ruling that dead animals must be burned due to danger of BSE transmission has critically lowered the vultures' food supply

The incident is the latest in a series to cast the griffon vulture in a villanous light, which has prompted rural French and Spanish of the region to ask for the right to shoot the protected birds.

For centuries, the Pyrenean farmers lived in symbiotic harmony with the griffon vulture. Wheeling over their flocks and fields, the birds were seen as neither a threat nor even a nuisance, but as a vital part of the ecosystem.

When farmers had to dispose of a dead animal, they would simply take it to one of hundreds of carcass dumps scattered across the moutains where the scavengers gathered to do their work.

But now, after an EC ruling that dead animals must be burned due to the danger of BSE transmission, the vultures' food supply has been critically lowered and they have been forced to spread further afield.



Fear of vultures has been growing in recent years as they have spread from their mountain eyries.

French news weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, in 2007 reported of 'mutant vultures', with one woman saying that a group of the birds, whose wingspans can exceed seven feet, gathered menacingly near to where her children were sitting.

'We are seeing three-figure vulture flocks over Belgium and Holland. These birds are fanning out across Europe in search of food' Grahame Madge, European bird of prey expert at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

One farmer, Alain Larralde, said he saw a group of vultures attack and start eating an adult cow. There have been reports of live animals carried off.

'You can't imagine what it is like to see an animal eaten alive,' Mr Larralde was reported to have said.

But ornithologists say the real threat is not posed by the birds, but rather to them.

Grahame Madge, European bird of prey expert at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, said: 'We are seeing three-figure vulture flocks over Belgium and Holland. These birds are fanning out across Europe in search of food.