Fed poison by poachers, vulture numbers fall

The Times of India , Friday, August 28, 2015
Correspondent :
KENYA: Death feeds life on the Mara. Each summer, 5,00,000 wild beasts die along the treacherous migration from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania to the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. And with death come the scavengers, none more important than the vulture.

But the birds that once feasted on that misfortune, the janitors that clean the grassy plains, are collapsing with — part of a broader decline in vulture populations that throws off ecosystems and illustrates how far-reaching the effects of poaching, poisoning and other human interventions, harming the vulture population. can be. "The overall global picture for vultures is abysmal," said Darcy Ogada, the assistant director of Africa programs at the Peregrine Fund, an organization dedicated to saving birds of prey. "Does this story echo that of the canary in the coal mine? Sure does."

In the first major study of the 30-year decline of Pan-African vultures, Dr. Ogada and other scientists found that populations of eight species of vultures had declined at an average of 62%, with seven of those them species had declining at a rate of 80% or more over three generations. according to the study, published this summer in the journal Conservation Letters.

In some parts of Africa, vultures are targeted by poachers who poison carcasses hoping to kill the birds so they will not circle overhead and signal park rangers. A vulture can spot a dead elephant in less than 30 minutes, but it can take a poacher more than an hour to hack off ivory tusks. No vulture, no warning.

Here on the Mara, one of the greatest natural strongholds left on the planet, the vultures are not directly targeted but are the unintended victims of poisoning of carcasses that is meant to kill large carnivores, like hyenas, in an effort to protect livestock. Across Africa, the threats to wildlife are myriad, but much of the attention is focused on the stately animals of the savanna, like lions and elephants. Vultures do not make for pretty postcards, and the local authorities are already stretched thin trying to protect the animals that tourists come to see.

"Everyone forgets about the Ugly Bettys of this world," said Munir Z. Virani, who directs the Africa and South Asia programs for the Peregrine Fund. "We are told all the time by the authorities that they are so busy working to protect elephants and rhinos and other animals that when it comes to the vultures, they are exhausted."

Anthony Ole Tira, who is Masai and was raised on these lands and is now the co-owner of the Matira Bush Camp in the heart of the reserve, stood by a river crossing and pointed to scores of rotting carcasses.

One week earlier, 900,000 wildebeests, long in the face and often short on luck, had plunged headlong into the river in a panic. Thousands were trampled to death.

That was normal. The rotting remains were not.

"Ten years ago, this would have been cleaned by now," he said. "There are a lot of places along the Mara River that are not as clean as they once were because there are not enough vultures."

In 2000, DrMunir Z Virani, who directs the Africa and South Asia programs for the Peregrine Fund, was dispatched to India, where vultures were dying in great numbers but no one knew why. "Everywhere I went, there were dead vultures. But, their remains were in good condition," he said. "But everywhere, their remains were in good condition." The initial hypothesis was that some type of infectious disease was behind the deaths. Soon it became clear that the killer was man-made, in which a painkiller was widely used to treat livestock, that was poisoning the birds that fed on their carcasses. One carcass with the painkiller in its system could poison hundreds of birds, Dr. Virani said, and By 2006, when the painkiller was officially banned, the vulture population had already declined by 97%, Virani said. Over the same period, there was a drastic rise in cases of rabies in India, with feral dogs taking advantage of the decline in vultures and often spreading the disease to humans.

Dr Virani described what he called apocalyptic scenes, with hordes of wild dogs numbering in the thousands, scavenging the remains of livestock. Estimates vary, but some put the feral dog population in India now as high as 25 million.

Roughly 36 percent of the world's rabies deaths — the majority of them children — occur in India, according to the World Health Organization. The battle against the virus is costing the government billions of dollars.

Over tens of millions of years, Vultures have evolved into the most efficient cleaners in the natural world. because of their highly acidic gastric juices, due to which they can eat flesh infected with a variety of diseases without getting ill. When the vultures feast on diseased meat, picking the carcass clean, Thus, the threat of wider infection ends. But once the vultures are cleared from the skies, they are very hard to bring back.

Dr Virani explained that said vultures, despite their powerful digestive systems, are fragile and in their first year of life, vultures they have a n extraordinary 90% mortality rate.

 
SOURCE : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/Fed-poison-by-poachers-vulture-numbers-fall/articleshow/48704729.cms
 


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