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 eighteenth-century piles in the city centre. 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 action 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 ten 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 ona live map. His trainer at Lima’s Huachipa Zoo, Alfredo Correa, beams with admiration. “They can eat dead animals because their metabolism protects them from viruses and bacteria,” he says. “They’ve got some of the strongest gut flora in the natural world.” The effort is a collaboration between USAID and the Peruvian Environment Ministry to tackle