It is not closely related to the superficially similar New World vultures, and does not share the good sense of smell of some members of that family of birds.

[3] This species is patchily distributed through much of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, though it is absent from much of the central and western parts of the continent and declining elsewhere in its range.

The lappet-faced vulture breeds in Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.

It is also present in Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, the Central African Republic and Angola,[1] as well as a single vagrant record in Kuwait.

[4] This vulture prefers to live in dry savannah, thornbush, arid plains, deserts with scattered trees in wadis, open mountain slopes.

They are usually found in undisturbed open country with a scattering of trees and apparently prefer areas with minimal grass cover.

Compared to the somewhat similarly marked hooded vulture, it is considerably larger with a more massive bill and can only be confused at a great distance.

The cinereous vulture (which may overlap in range in the Arabian area) has a similar body shape but is all dark, with no contrasting plumage.

This is often beneficial to the less powerful vultures because the Lappet-face can tear through the tough hides and knotty muscles of large mammals that the others cannot penetrate.

[1] The lappet-faced vulture's world population is believed to have decreased perceptibly, and as of October 2015 their IUCN status was updated to Endangered.

Domestic cattle, who have replaced natural prey over much of the range, are now often sold off, rather than abandoned, due to the proliferation of markets and abattoirs and rarely left to die and be consumed by vultures.

In some cases the poisoning is done by poachers, who fear the presence of vultures will alert authorities to their activities, the illegal killings of protected species.

It is suspected that they died after eating the carcasses of 3 elephants that were poisoned by poachers, possibly to avoid detection by the birds, which help rangers to track poaching activity by circling above where there are dead animals.