09 Apr 2014

An estimated 2 400 vultures are believed to have been poisoned in Southern Africa in the year 2013.

Speaking at a vulture educational talk hosted by Birdlife Botswana, chief executive officer (CEO) of VulPro, Ms Kerri Wolter said vultures were a critical component of the ecological system and if they were to become extinct, chances of a disease outbreak would be high.

“Vultures reduce the spread of diseases and if they are not protected and left to disappear, there will be a higher spread of diseases from carcasses that would have been left to rot and our ecosystems will fall out of balance,” she said.

She indicated that of the 11 African vulture species, nine were found in Southern Africa and most of them were disappearing or had already vanished. VulPro is a non-government organisation based in South Africa and dealt specifically with vulture research, conservation and rehabilitation.

Ms Wolter said the South African National Environmental Management Act (NEMBA) considered all nine species as either endangered, vulnerable or extinct and that the Egyptian vulture is thought to be extinct in South Africa since the 1950s.

She said the biggest threat to vultures is poisoning and electrical power line electrocutions. Poison is placed in carcasses and this largely happens in three main ways, she said.

“Firstly, wildlife poachers lace carcass with poison so that vultures circling over poached animals do not attract the attention of authorities. Unfortunately, the vultures eat the meat and then die fulfilling the poacher’s goal,” she said.

She indicated that in other instances, farmers can unintentionally kill vultures by placing poisoned carcasses near their farms to kill mammalian predators and vultures are often the first to see the carcass, hence consuming the meat and dying.

Ms Wolter said the third way through which vultures get poisoned is through some veterinary products given to livestock.  If vultures happened to have fed on animals that were given such medications recently, they die.

“Another threat to vultures is that they are being used for traditional medicine,’ she said, adding that in some provinces in South Africa, some people believe that by sniffing the brains of a vulture or sleeping with a vulture’s head under one’s pillow, such persons will dream of winning lotto numbers.

She said captive breeding maybe the future to saving vultures and urged Botswana to tag its vulture population in order to monitor them.

“We should work together to save our vultures because we cannot do it individually as countries,” she concluded.

For his part, Director of Birdlife Botswana, Dr Kabelo Senyatso said late last year, Birdlife Botswana launched the “I want Botswana Vultures ALIVE not DEAD” campaign with the aim of increasing public awareness on problems faced by vultures and other birds of prey.

He said the campaign is scheduled to run for the next 2-3 years and at present, it has received financial support from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, the Global Environment Facility/Small Grants Programme (GEF/SGP), Kalahari Insurance Brokers, Game Rangers Association of Africa (GRAA) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

“Vultures continue to be poisoned and last week we received reports that three (3) had died near Pandamantenga farms from what was suspected to be poison,” he said, adding that in 2011, 100 vultures also died near Lesoma.

Dr Senyatso said vultures are very important to Botswana’s tourism because if they were to disappear, the ecosystem will be greatly affected.

“Some of the wildlife will die due to outbreaks of diseases from rotten carcasses and it will be detrimental to Botswana’s efforts of diversifying her economy through tourism,” he said. Ends