Little introduction is needed on the problems vultures are currently facing. Alongside devastating reports describing the ongoing massacre and the overall speed at which we are losing these natural scavengers, more positive signals are to be picked up from France, were vultures are taking up their important ecological role again. For Eurasian black vultures, assisted recolonization started 26 years ago. Alongside many other actions the idea to collect samples from reintroduced birds as well as all nestlings to get better insights in this “French metapopulation” was visionary. Now, a quarter century after these first reintroductions, several in-situ partners and “Le Centre d’Ecology, Fonctionelle & Evolutive” (Montpellier FR) teamed up with the conservation genetics lab of the “Centre of Research and Conservation” (Antwerp- BE) to get even more in depth insights in this reintroduction program. Here we will showcase how dedicated fieldwork, biobanking and “some genetics” can be key to understand both theoretical and more practical aspects in vulture reintroductions. Although existing banding (ring) data already gives some information on reproductive success for some nest, data on parentage remains largely unknown. Here we used a set of 9 previously described and 7 newly developed microsatellite markers to reconstruct relatedness within this population and to draft a pedigree for all French populations. Based on this information we first questioned the role of reintroduced birds: did they only attract birds from neighboring populations (cfr conspecific attraction) or did they also actively contributed in setting up the current colonies. With both Spanish rehabilitated and captive bred birds being released we subsequently questioned the relative role of both “type” of birds in the success of this reintroduction project. Next we studied trends in how these reintroduced birds drive population growth or in other words, can genetic data be used to decide when to halt reintroductions. Subsequently we used this data to evaluate trends in genetic diversity within colonies. At present we are linking sibling information (full, half or unrelated) within nests to get better insights in both nest and mate fidelity.