This vulture is a bird of hilly, mountainous areas, especially favouring dry semi-open habitats such as meadows at high altitudes over much of the range. Nesting usually occurs near the tree line in the mountains. They are always associated with undisturbed, remote areas with limited human disturbance. They forage for carcasses over various kinds of terrain, including steppe, other grasslands, open woodlands, along riparian habitats or any kind or gradient of mountainous habitat. In their current European range and through the Caucasus and Middle East, cinereous vultures are found from 100 to 2,000 m in elevation, while in their Asian distribution, they are typically found at higher elevations (in Europe there is little terrain that goes higher than this).

 

More solitary than other old world species, they generally only get together when a large carcass is found. While there may be areas known for them breeding in, they do not form colonies in any normal sense, with nests generally found at least 300m apart and often far more. A pair will usually return to the same nest, year after year, and the nest can grow to a considerable size, being 1.5m-2m wide and 1.5m-3m deep, and generally anywhere from 1.5m -12m off the ground.

Usually, just one egg will be laid, though very occasionally a second one will be added. This obviously means that the species is not capable of rapid recovery from human persecution or other impacts on their population size. They have a success rate of 90% of chicks successfully leaving the nest, and 50% surviving to their first birthday.

Its closest relative is the Lappet-faced vulture. This has been known to occasionally take live prey, and while the Cinerous vulture does so less often, it has also been occasionally recorded.

While its decline has been significant over the last 200 years (mostly as a result of it responding to bait balls put out to take other predators) it is currently listed as near threatened. The decline has been the greatest in the western half of the range, with extinction in many European countries (France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Albania, Moldova, Romania) and its entire breeding range in northwest Africa (Morocco and Algeria). They no longer nest in Israel. It should be noted, that as a species which can fly large distances, it is quite possible to return to many of these places rather quickly, and should human caused fatality halt, it is quite likely that we would start to see this species back in many places where it still belongs.