Experts: Vultures on brink of extinction

A team of researchers have warned that African vultures are likely to become extinct over the next few years due to deliberate poisoning and neglect by conservation groups.

They warn the decline in vulture numbers can have immense effects on human health and the ecosystem, which they help stabilise.

The experts drawn from the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), Endangered Wildlife Trust, Makerere University and The Peregrine Fund assert that very soon the vultures will qualify as ‘critically endangered’ under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) global threat criteria because of little incentive towards their protection.

In a report published in the scientific journal, Conservation Letter, the scientists agree that the bird scavengers are essential to a healthy ecosystem.

Carcasses are largely consumed by mammalian scavengers such as wild dogs and jackals, and without them, disease transmission, with possibly dire consequences to human health may be on the increase.

Darcy Ogada of The Peregrine Fund and NMK and lead author of the study says, “Large declines of Africa’s vultures should ring alarm bells due to their immense ecological importance”.

waste products

Dr Ogada adds that the vultures are a vital component of a healthy environment, especially in Africa, where ‘free’ ecosystem services such as disposal of carcasses and other waste products remain the norm.

“If we do not take urgent steps to save these birds, and in particular to curtail wildlife poisoning, we should expect long-term consequences for the environment, as well as for humans in Africa,” he said.

He explains in the report that what makes their results so concerning is that national parks and game reserves appear to offer these birds very little effective protection.

“Because vultures are so mobile and can easily travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres, decline rates were worryingly high even within protected areas,” he said.

The report adds that being long-lived slow breeders, vultures take several years to reach maturity, and typically fledge only a single offspring every one to two years.

The study indicates Africa’s vultures are declining at rates of between 70 per cent and 97 per cent over three generations; a time interval used by the IUCN when assessing a species’ threat status.

Since six of the eight species are largely or wholly confined to Africa, and are projected to decline by at least 80 per cent over three generations, the study suggests they are likely to qualify as ‘Critically Endangered’ under the IUCN’s global threat criteria.

declining numbers

Continent-wide declines in vulture species have already been reported in four Asian vulture species.

However, the study’s authors highlight two important distinctions between the Asian vulture crisis and that in Africa.

First, to date, the rates of decline evident in Africa have been substantially lower than in Asia, affording African governments a window of opportunity in which to head off the environmental consequences of a collapse in this functionally important group.

Second, while Asian vultures have declined largely as a result of a single factor (ingestion of the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac), African vultures face multiple threats.

“They include incidental and deliberate poisoning, the illegal trade in vulture body parts for traditional medicine, killing for bush meat, mortality caused by power lines and wind turbines, and a reduction in habitat and the availability of food from wild animal populations,” says Oganda.

The study suggests the greatest quantifiable threat to Africa’s vultures is poisoning, which accounted for 61 per cent of all reported deaths.

African vultures are often the unintended victims of poisoning incidents, in which carcasses are baited with highly toxic agricultural pesticides to kill livestock predators.

However, the study also shows that the recent rapid increase in elephant and rhino poaching throughout Africa has led to a surge in the number of vulture deaths recorded, as carcasses have been poisoned specifically to eliminate vultures, whose overhead circling might otherwise reveal the poachers’ illicit activities.

Ogada said the situation requires the resolution of a number of environmental and cultural issues.

“We propose a range of measures including more effective regulation of the import and sale of agricultural and other chemicals commonly used as poisons. This would benefit not just vultures, but all species widely targeted by pastoralists and poachers in Africa,” he said.

Another author, Andre Botha of Endangered Wildlife Trust, explained that there has been a substantial increase in the number of reported mortality of vultures in Southern Africa resulting from poisoning and interactions with energy infrastructure since 2011.

black market

“There are very real concerns that the region’s vulture populations cannot be sustained with these losses and, considering the range of other threats that also impact on these birds, it is possible the region may see other species joining the Egyptian vulture by being declared extinct. The environment and people of southern Africa simply cannot afford this,” Dr Botha said.

Ralph Buij of Alterra Wageningen University said trade in vulture parts for traditional medicine is particularly widespread in West Africa, where vultures are openly traded at large markets, especially in Nigeria and Benin.

“’Because vultures remove large amounts of pathogen-infested meat and other waste products each day, they limit the spread of disease in both rural and urban areas. Ironically, therefore, the trade of vultures for traditional medicine may in fact enhance the spread of disease,” said Dr Buij.

The Peregrine Fund Africa Program Director Munir Virani said the catastrophic collapse of South Asia’s critically endangered vultures over a decade ago unified South Asian governments to ban the manufacture and use of veterinary diclofenac, the main cause of the population declines.

He said saving Africa’s vultures from extinction will require unwavering support from African governments.

“In addition, outreach programmes geared towards pastoral communities in East Africa will be critical in ensuring that they perceive vultures as a vital and integral component of ecosystems and economies,” said Dr Virani.

Derek Pomeroy of Makerere University said lack of adequate information on numbers and movements of any vulture species in Uganda is a cause for concern.