Poisoning pushes vulture drop

Vulture populations in one of Africa's most important wildlife reserves have declined by 60%, say scientists. home

The researchers recommend that the decline of vultures in Kenya's Masai Mara is getting pushed by poisoning.

The US-based Peregrine Fund says farmers occasionally lace the bodies of useless cattle or goats that has a poisonous pesticide termed furadan.

This seems to become aimed at carnivores that destroy the livestock, but one particular carcass can poison as much as one hundred fifty vultures.

Munir Virani, who's director in the Peregrine Fund's Africa programmes, has termed for use of furadan to become banned from the region "to preserve these keystone members in the scavenging community".

"People could consider vultures as unsightly and disgusting, but the birds are important for your ecosystem," he says.

Their style for carrion truly makes them the landscape's clean-up group - ensuring the region isn't littered with bodies, assisting include the spread of condition and recycling nutrients.

The results of this most recent survey of vultures are published from the journal Biological Conservation.

The terrible consequences of a vulture population crash have currently been demonstrated for the duration of a case that grew to become often known as the Asian vulture crisis.

Populations of Gyps vultures particularly, in South Asia, crashed by more than 95% over just some years from the 1990s, principally because farmers handled their cattle with the pain-killing drug diclofenac.

The pain-killer, it turned out, was lethal towards the vultures, which fed around the useless cattle.

At the same time as driving three species of vulture towards the brink of extinction, the crisis supplied a massive level of meals for wild dogs, which moved in to take the spot in the birds.

This had the devastating side-effect of raising the spread of rabies. And Dr Virani is worried that an identical predicament could transpire in Kenya.

The solution in Africa although, could possibly be way more simple than in South Asia.

By boosting the general public image of vultures from the region, the Peregrine Fund hopes to discontinue individuals from carrying out these "revenge poisoning attacks".

In between 2003 and 2005, Dr Virani and his colleagues drove throughout the expansive Kenyan landscapes, counting vultures.

He and his colleagues then compared the outcomes of these surveys with the final results of surveys carried out from the 1980s. The comparison exposed a 60% decline in vultures.

Corinne Kendall's do the job has taken this survey a action more.

Ms Kendal can be a researcher from Princeton University from the US, that has also been operating with the Peregrine Fund - tracking and monitoring the birds to investigate the extent in the poisoning.

"We attached the GPS trackers like tiny backpacks," she tells BBC News. "There's a piece that sits on their chest and two loops approximately each and every wing."

"But we had four out of sixteen vultures killed from the first yr and three of these had been confirmed circumstances of poisoning.

"From a sample of sixteen, it really is difficult to find out how representative that is, but it really is particularly worrying."