SAVE OUR RAPTORS Learn more about Vultures - Abstract from Ndege News No documentary of the African bush is complete without reference to vultures circling high above or feasting on a carcass. We cannot fail to be in awe of their work even if the scene is grisly. They arrive like a disaster crew. Clearly there is a division of roles and attending specialists. Within as little as 20 minutes a large animal can be dismantled, consumed and virtually sterilised. Various species violently scramble to feast with much fighting and noisy protest. Then they loaf around replete and bored and one by one they vanish into the sky. The domestic life of vultures is very different. They dote on their mates and young, sometimes flying hundreds of kilometres each day commuting between their nest and food. Their “public display of affection” between pairs even extends to necking at busy carcasses! Vultures are unusual for birds or mammals in being highly social with much body contact and as a result are complex both physiologically and in behaviour. Vultures are not only the janitors of protected areas with wildlife, but have also historically made a good living in villages, fishing camps, and the vast pastoral livestock lands that make up three quarters of East Africa. When you look at over one million wildebeest in the Mara and Serengeti and reflect that only some 30% of them will ultimately end up in a carnivore or scavenger it comes as a shock to many that the rest is mostly consumed by birds. Today livestock far exceeds by weight all the wild ungulates combined. Vultures in this land use were also one of the highest consumers because an enormous percent die before going to market. Research in the 1970s, using powered gliders, followed vultures across the Serengeti and studied their role as the major consumers of “meat biomass”. Today researchers put GPS trackers on vultures and have seen them move, on their computer screens, over vast distances very quickly. Individual vultures move over Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and Ethiopia. One juvenile Rüppell’s Vulture was tracked from Southern Serengeti to South Sudan, feeding on wildebeest one week and White-eared Kob the next. Seemingly on a whim it went off to Eastern Kenya, near to the coast. Or was it a whim? How did it know that there was a drought and tens of thousands of cattle were dying? The amazing “powers” of vultures are simple to explain. They play “follow my leader” over the horizon. This networking can within hours bring vultures in from hundreds of kilometres. In hours or days they cross national boundaries. There is nothing mystical about it, but unfortunately for vultures some cultures in Africa think the vulture can see into the future. Many are killed and their parts used in a witchcraft process that does neither vultures nor humans any good. In Kenya we have 7 species of vultures. As little as 15 years ago it may have been possible to have seen all of them together at a carcass. The giant Bearded Vulture (or Lammergeyer) with a 3 metre wing span, goat-like beard and blood red eye ring is today functionally extinct in Kenya with at most 3 pairs in north western Kenya and with no protection measures in place it is sure to fade into memory. It could be managed, encouraged and returned, but although we have policies and laws, there is no funding or will to see these implemented. It is the only raptor in Africa to have had an attempt to re-introduce it in Hell’s Gate National Park, but again funds ran out and the project was prematurely abandoned. Ethiopia still supports a good number and on Mt Meru and Mt Kilimanjaro in Northern Tanzania the relict few pairs need all the attention they can get if they are to remain. The Egyptian vulture has suffered a terrifying collapse. As little as the mid 1990s pairs were spaced equably throughout the country as well as in the remote mountains of Kenya. Today this small rooster sized, intelligent tool-using vulture is virtually extinct except in remote areas. The Hooded Vulture too was not long ago abundant, especially in villages. Now it too is endangered. The same is true for the Rüppell’s and White backed vultures, two species that look very similar and share much the same needs and biology, except that the Rüppell’s is larger and nests on cliffs and the other on trees. Only one cliff nesting site is protected, in Hell’s Gate National Park, but that too has been severely disrupted by geothermal exploitation despite pleas to leave it alone being made for over 20 years. In a decade these two declined by 40-60% nationally. The White Headed Vulture and Lappet faced vulture behave more like eagles, stay in pairs with defined territories and sometimes catch their own prey. But these too have been up-listed. At a zebra or wildebeest carcass in the Mara it is not unusual to see the Rüppell’s, White backed, Lappet faced and Hooded Vultures all together. Each have different dining utensils, one has a massive axe of a bill to tear tough skin, sinew and cartilage, two others have less specialised bills, but an incredible tongue that eviscerates its meals like a meat processor, and the smallest has a tiny delicate bill. In theory they minimise competition, selecting different parts, but in practise this orderly process is often overtaken by appallingly bad table manners. The migrant Eurasian Griffon certainly makes it as far as South Sudan and northern Ethiopia. Recent tracking has proved this, but it is very easy to confuse with some pale morph Rüppell’s Vultures. Even the experts do not agree on the identity of some questionable individuals. However it is certain to occasionally make it into Kenya. Last is the Palm nut Vulture, a species with no discernible relationship to any vulture because it does not look or behave like one. Recent DNA work, the final word in classification, remains in a complete muddle as to where best it should be placed. It is certainly very odd and thanks to its fondness for palm nuts, fish, crabs and insects, it is one of the few, although never abundant, to not be so threatened. Unfortunately an amusing and informative summary on vultures in Africa, without mentioning their plight, would be an injustice to a group so imperilled. It is also impossible to write about vultures without always referring back to the monumental service they do in cleaning up and regulating the ecology of the environment. Their sudden loss and the loss of the services they render may be costing us untold millions and altering the ecology on a continent-wide scale. Wildlife and livestock managers have failed to understand that the most important of all cleaners are vultures – not lions, leopards, cheetah, hyenas, jackals, dogs or man-made solutions. In the absence of vultures we would predict an increase in their competitors especially bacteria and maggots. This brings diseases to all and greatly alarms health officials, but overlooked is the predictable shift in competing scavenger species and the consequences. Vultures are in rapid decline losing ground as their wild herds dwindle. Other factors include the decline in available livestock, the loss of their nesting trees, loss of solitude, direct persecution by commercial poachers and especially wildlife poisoning. Most know of the loss of vultures in India, but the genesis of that has no relation to that occurring across Africa. In India vultures are venerated and feed and breed in thousands among people. A pain killer, diclofenac, made it into the livestock market. Cattle are sacred to the Hindu and when suffering (often just before death) must be helped. A single cow given this pain reliever can kill most of the vultures that consume it. It took meticulous forensic work to find and prove it. The use of diclofenac led to a 95% decline that led to a sudden monumental increase in dogs and associated rabies as well as other bacterial diseases. The Indian Government made the decision to ban the use of diclofenac in livestock. Poisoning of vultures in Africa happens for four separate reasons. One is the poisoning of carnivores that kill or threaten to kill livestock. The vulture eats the same poisoned carcass or the animals that have died as a result. Two, is the deliberate killing of vultures because no other creature is as effective of giving away the position of commercial poachers to rangers. Three, is to provide dead birds for witchcraft and four is the deaths that occur after eating poached animals such as elephant or rhino that have themselves been poisoned. While conservationists protest and demand the implementation of the law, conservation interventions and national awareness programmes, the problem continues. Vultures are truly a fast disappearing group, and although recently the focus of international media, are still overlooked by a tourism driven (not science driven) wildlife conservation policy that is demonstrably flawed. In concluding this series on Kenya’s raptors it is crucial that everyone is informed, so that attitudes change, wildlife priorities shift, and that we all act to save our raptors.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 12:02:10 +0000
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