Strike on endangered birds
MASSACRE: 537 TO 1 000 VULTURES DIED FROM POACHERS’ POISON IN BOTSWANA LAST YEAR
Population will take five to eight years to recover, researcher says.
Avisit to Victoria Falls Safari Lodge’s wellknown vulture restaurant, The Vulture Culture Experience, recently revealed far fewer of these endangered birds feeding on carcasses than in the past.
The lodge’s estate wildlife supervisor, Moses Garira, said the number of birds visiting the Vulture Culture Experience had halved following a poisoning incident in June last year, 130km away in Botswana.
The bodies of 537 vultures were found on and near the caracasses of elephant which had been poisoned by poachers. However, Garira believed the death toll could be as high as 1 000, because some poisoned birds would have flown off to die and many chicks would have starved to death.
This would make the mass killing the biggest recorded of these birds, multiple species of which are considered threatened or endangered across Africa.
Garira added that “these are the birds that go to Botswana and back. We used to feed 300 to 500 vultures a day, but now we only get around 100”.
He estimated it would take up to a decade for this vulture population to recover. Previously he used to see lappet-faced and white-headed vultures (more endangered species) regularly at the lodge, but has seen neither in recent months. The birds coming to the restaurant are predominantly white-backed and hooded vultures, he said.
However, there has been a small silver lining lately. Since December the numbers coming to feed are up 10%, due to the babies, which are born in the middle of the year, being strong enough to leave their nests.
“If we don’t do anything (to conserve the vultures), in 50 years to come there may be no vultures left on earth,” Garira said.
Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust wildlife and research manager Roger Parry said seven elephants were shot in a remote area north of Nata in Botswana and three of the carcases laced with carbofuran to poison the vultures, so they would not alert the authorities to the poachers’ location.
His estimate of the toll was more conservative, saying in addition to the 537 dead (mostly white-backed vultures found at the site), up to 180 more birds may have perished, and that the population would take five to eight years to recover.
“We found a dead vulture 120km away in the Zambezi National Park. We tested it and it came back positive for carbofuran.”
Parry said there had been a definite decline in vultures at the Vulture Culture Experience since last year, with a 10-day monitoring project showing numbers were down on average 11%.
He said the incident had highlighted a gap in the monitoring of vultures, prompting a meeting in Victoria Falls next month with his counterparts from Botswana, Namibia and Zambia to develop a logistical and coordinated approach to vulture conservation.
Parry envisioned a multipronged approach, which, in addition to improving vulture monitoring, would see resources put in place to respond quickly to poisoning incidents to limit the damage. He also hoped to focus on education, law enforcement and poison control, which would include removing some poisons poachers use from the market.
White-backed, lappet-faced, hooded, white-headed, palmut and Cape vultures are found in Zimbabwe and all of them have been listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as either endangered or critically endangered.
Malicious poisoning by poachers is the single largest threat vultures face in Zimbabwe, Parry said. This was followed by accidental poisoning, for example, if a farmer poisons a predator, and the carcass is consumed by a vulture, or through veterinary drugs.
Vulture restaurants play an important role in providing a safe food source for these birds and while some argue it creates a dependency, not enough food is provided to sustain them, so while birds are used to feeding at the vulture restaurants, they are not dependent on them, he said.