Battle of beaks: Kenya steps up war against invasive crows

It’s an early August morning in Watamu. The sun has yet to peep above the horizon and let its golden rays kiss the local beaches, reflecting blissfully off the ocean.

Eric Kinoti leads a small team in search of dead house crows on the grounds of the police station.

Kinoti is the head of Crow No More!, a project run by A Rocha Kenya – a Christian conservation organisation.

The previous day, his team had prepared and deployed a lethal feast of meat laced with poison designed to kill the birds.

As The Standard reported yesterday, the house crow, an invasive species, has gained a dubious reputation as the most disliked bird in the region. It has disrupted Kenya’s coastal biodiversity, harmed the profits of poultry farmers and hoteliers, and raised concerns about public health risks.

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In June, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) launched a programme aimed at eradicating the birds. However, months into the mission, participants are raising questions about the availability of funds to realise this goal.

The bird-killer

While KWS is directing the programme, the work of eliminating the birds will be carried out by A Rocha Kenya (in the North Coast) and a private company called Little Kenya Gardens (in the South Coast).

Their tool is a poison called starlicide, originating from the United States, where it was first used to control pests such as starlings, ravens, and pigeons. Today, only one company in the world, domiciled in New Zealand, manufactures the poison.

An environmental impact assessment by Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) concluded that the chemical is safe for this purpose.

Kinoti explains that the poison takes around 12 hours to fatally damage the crow’s internal organs. By the time the crow dies, he says, all traces of poison are gone. If another animal eats the dead bird, it would not be poisoned.

“Starlicide is environmentally friendly. It is fully metabolised, and it degrades under light,” he says. “We do not expect any negative effects on fauna and flora in the ecosystem.”

A Rocha Kenya led a previous attempt to eradicate the crows with starlicide between 1998 and 2005, but the programme ended when bureaucracy made it difficult to import the poison from the United States.

Nearly 20 years later, the only person in Kenya licensed to import starlicide is Cecilia Ruto, founder of Little Kenya Gardens. She says it took years to navigate the bureaucratic procedures required to get the licence and test the poison’s efficacy under the supervision of the Pest Control Products Board, as required by law.

Bounty for dead crows

There is no love lost between Ruto and the house crow. She has been advocating to neutralise the bird since 2015.

“This bird has taken food from my plate and disrupted my mealtime,” she says. “It has spoiled my dress with its acidic droppings.”

Now the tables are turning, with the crow’s fate largely in Ruto’s hands.

She explains how the eradication will work, first, through a process called pre-baiting. Her team will provide crows with meat at specified sites for 60 consecutive days.

“This is meant to lure the bird and keep it coming back to feed. After the last day of pre-baiting, the following day, the meat will be laced with the poison, and the birds will eat to their fill.”

The next morning, the team will collect the dead birds, and they need help from local residents.

“We will put word out through local radio and TV stations that they should expect dead birds,” she says. “We will also pay locals Sh20 per bird collected and delivered to a designated place.”

Ruto says the process will be repeated every three to six months and that, with every wave of pre-baiting and baiting, at least 90 per cent of the crows that take the bait will be eliminated.

“This undertaking, if funded properly, will leave zero crows alive,” she says. “I will be so confident in what we will have accomplished that I will dare anyone to bring me one live house crow after we are done, and I will pay them good money.”

Her team will also search for the birds’ nests and destroy their eggs.

Residents to the rescue

The eradication programme’s success depends on a steady supply of starlicide. But when The Standard spoke with Ruto in August, she did not have the finances to import the poison.

“If I can’t get money to import the starlicide, then there is no project to accomplish,” she said. “In my view, the government should fund this, perhaps through the Ministry of Tourism, to enable us to buy the poison.”

At the meeting in June, when KWS approved the eradication programme, stakeholders discussed an estimated budget of Sh117 million to implement the work along the coast. Given the public benefits, the assumption was that the government would provide the money.

So far, however, the two crow-culling organisations have had to source funds from well-wishers.

A Rocha Kenya has sought donations through its social media pages and website, and is receiving scrap meat for free from hotels supporting the endeavour. Ruto’s Little Kenya Gardens was rescued by the South Coast Residents Association (SCRA), which raised Sh2.8 million to import “just enough” poison to sustain the South Coast programme.

George Mokaya, chairperson of SCRA, says residents decided to raise funds “because we don’t know if and when the government will inject funds into the work.”

“All of us have suffered the brunt of the crow,” he says. “As residents here, we know the pain of having this bird around us and have chosen to be proactive in finding solutions.”

The programme still needs to purchase hundreds of kilograms of bait (currently Little Kenya Gardens is using dog meat from Farmers Choice) every day up to the poisoning date. Staff, transportation, and communication via local media are expected to consume millions as well.

The big question remains: can the two organisations implementing the project succeed with intermittent, uncertain cash flows? Attempts to clarify the situation with KWS received no response to calls, texts, or emails.

Is Nairobi next?

Amid uncertainty about funding, concerns are growing that the house crow is expanding its territory. The Kenya Bird Trends website shows the Indian crow spreading inland, reaching Emali – just 120km from Nairobi.

Dr Colin Jackson, an ornithologist at A Rocha Kenya, warns it would be catastrophic if the bird reached the capital.

“In Nairobi, the crow will have a bottomless source of food,” he says. “The house crow thrives around dumpsites, and Nairobi’s waste piles will allow it to grow unabated, ballooning its numbers.”

Nairobi produces around 2,400 tonnes of waste daily, according to NEMA. Only 38 per cent is collected; the rest is dumped illegally, burned, or left in waterways.

Eliminating the Indian house crow from the Kenyan coast could secure the capital. But it is a huge undertaking.

Just before publishing this story, Kinoti’s team told The Standard that they had killed 4,714 crows so far. The South Coast team is halfway through pre-baiting. Whether success will be achieved remains to be seen.

At her home on the South Coast, Cecilia Ruto used to throw projectiles at house crows to shoo them off. The birds responded by mobbing her angrily whenever she arrived home from work. She later realised the crows could recognise her as the one throwing stones.

This intelligence has enabled the crows to outwit other birds in the ecosystem, says Jackson. The crows observe other birds to locate their nests, then move in to eat chicks or destroy eggs. When targeting poultry, crows work as a team: some distract the mother hen while others grab the chicks.

“It has been suggested that the crow has the intelligence equivalent to a seven-year-old human,” he says.

Kinoti explains that pre-baiting avoids arousing the birds’ suspicions. Providing poison-free meat for days builds trust. On poisoning day, the odourless starlicide is undetectable.

“The crow, after ingesting the poison, will go about its business,” he says. “They die at roost sites, far from where they consumed the poison. Surviving birds cannot associate their deaths with the poisoned meat.”

This story was produced with the support of the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.