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Drowning in rubbish, Lima sends out the vultures with GoPros | Cities | The Guardian

Some cities have pigeons. Lima has black vultures, or gallinazos. They circle in groups overhead and perch on the city’s most emblematic buildings – the decrepit, colonial-era churches and crumbling 18th-century piles in the city’s downtown. In many ways, with their wrinkly heads and beady eyes, they remind Lima residents of the side of their city they would rather ignore: the neglect, poverty and filth.

But these carrion-eaters’ natural affinity for dead and decaying things is being turned into a virtue. Environmental authorities are giving these much-maligned birds a PR makeover, kitting them out with GoPro video cameras and GPS trackers, and giving them a new mission in the fight against fly-tipping and illegal dumping.

Samuel is one of the project’s 10 certified disease-free Coragyps atratus that have been charged with doing what they do best: sniffing out rubbish. Fitted with his tracker, he is set free above the city, where he identifies clandestine dumps and records the GPS coordinates on a live map.