Animal Nature: Portland Audubon throws a party honoring vultures, which unfairly get a bad rap

Every major ailment, social movement and cultural cause has an international awareness day.

Nurses, teachers and bosses have their own. Oceans have one. Deserts, too. Even topics that hardly seem like cause for raucous global partyin' have days set aside to commemorate, promote or mobilize in favor of everything from lefthanders (Aug. 13) to vegetarians (Oct. 1) to -- seriously, can't make this stuff up -- intellectual property (April 26).

So along comes International Vulture Awareness Day this Saturday and, it turns out, reasons abound to gaze skyward to admire one of Earth's most misunderstood, maligned and mythologized creatures.

Audubon Society of Portland, one of the nation's oldest conservation organizations, plans a family-friendly shindig to raise awareness of the plight of vulture species and to highlight the work of conservationists trying to help the birds. (See box for event details.)

While the population of turkey vultures -- Cathartes aura -- catching thermals above Oregon each spring through early fall appears robust, vulture populations elsewhere in the world are plummeting because of human activity.

State and federal laws make it illegal to shoot them, but in other countries vultures are hunted for sport. In the United States and elsewhere, vultures die from lead poisoning after ingesting carcasses of animals killed with lead ammunition. Some cultures use vulture body parts in folk medicines.