Saving Vultures from poisoning and other threats
By John Davies, Project Coordinator: Raptor Conservation & Research
International Vulture Awareness Day is marked annually in September to raise awareness about a species that is often maligned despite their vital contribution to maintaining the health of ecosystems.
Known as nature’s cleanup crew or garbage collectors, vultures play a crucial role preserve the balance of our environment by disposing of carcasses and likely preventing the spread of disease. The benefits they provide go even further.
Vulture populations have plummeted across their range in recent years, with some species now listed as Critically Endangered. To ensure the future survival of this key species, a Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian Vultures (Vulture MsAP) was released under the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) in 2017. Its main aims are to identify and implement key conservation actions designed to reverse recent population trends and restore the conservation status of each species to a favourable level and to provide conservation management guidelines applicable to all Range States within the plan’s scope. This includes South Africa.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust plays an important role within South Africa, and Africa, to protect vultures for their most common threat – poisoning.
Through our work, we not only monitor and track all vulture species within the southern African region, but also implement a number of applied interventions to conserve the Old World Vulture Species found in South Africa. Of the 11 Old World Vultures found in Africa, seven are on the verge of extinction. These include the breeding resident White-backed Vulture, Hooded Vulture, White-headed Vulture, Cape Vulture, Lapet-faced and the vagrant, less common Egyptian Vulture, as well as the Rüppell’s Vulture.
Besides addressing the increasing threat of wildlife poisoning, our work keeps in mind the situation that arose in India in the 1990’s when the local vulture population plummeted by 95% after vultures fed on livestock carcasses that contained and anti-inflammatory drug used to treat pain and inflammation in animals and people. All vultures died soon after feeding on the tainted carcasses and local scientists attributed their deaths to kidney failure caused by the effects of the drug diclofenac.
The near extinction of vultures in this region led to the death of nearly half a million people in subsequent years, because without these natural scavengers, carcasses pile up, and diseases including rabies spread more prolifically.
In South Africa, wildlife poisoning has become an increasingly prevalent and destructive threat over the last decade. Although this has for a long time been an under-studied and poorly-known concern, more recently, the severity of this has become more topical, particularly with the impacts on large carnivore populations being more notable. With a shift to more targeted poisonings that have a higher impact on these the charismatic species, the conservation focus has shifted to a point where the need to respond and deal with these incidents is finally getting more attention.
A sad outcome of much of this is that many species of avian scavengers, such as vultures, Tawny Eagle and Bateleur, have become the innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire. For most of these species, wildlife poisoning has become the most significant threat to their long-term survival. Unlike many other forms of poaching, just a handful of large events may be enough to cause a sever reduction in the population, particularly if no interventions are put in place.
The EWT’s Birds of Prey and Vultures for Africa Programmes focusses much of their work on developing key interventions that assist in reducing the severity of these losses. Although these by no means represent an exhaustive approach to solving the issue, there is little doubt that each of these instances provides another tool to work towards the long-term protection of avian scavengers from poisoning.
One of the most crucial aspects is the early detection of poisoning events, something that historically has posed a significant challenge in most conservation areas. We developed a pioneering rapid poisoning detection system called Eye in the Sky that harnesses vultures’ natural sentinel and foraging behaviour and pairs it with novel GPS tracking technology. This system closely monitors the behavioural signatures in GPS-tracked vultures to remotely detect the presence of poison sources and feeding events associated with potentially poisoned-laced carcasses. This system was built to enhance law enforcement and response team capacity and efficiency, while reducing the impact of wildlife poisoning in southern Africa.
With our partners, including the North Carolina Zoological Society and Contemplate Wild, we are also developing monitoring and technology solutions to make our alert system practical on the frontline. The system has been programmed to send notifications and near real-time information to monitoring software platforms (e.g. EarthRanger, SMART Conservation) used by those on the ground. In concert with this, we have set up an ever-growing network of GPS-tracked vultures across poisoning hotspots in southern and East Africa, actively surveying extensive wilderness areas that would otherwise be impossible to monitor.
Rapid Response and Treatment
With this early detection, comes the need to have skilled individuals to assist in the treatment of any live animals that may be found at these sites. As such, we have embarked on developing several approaches to make this a much more effective and efficient intervention.
First and foremost has been the training of over 2000 individuals across Africa in wildlife poisoning response and the inclusion of wildlife veterinarians that are able to assist when needed with the treatment of live patients. A vast number of veterinarians have little to no real-world experience working with birds of prey, especially Vultures, and as such, their involvement with these situations has been limited previously. The EWT has embarked on a process of upskilling key veterinarians working in key focal areas to become another layer of support when needed. Many large poisoning events are spread out over a large geographic area and having several individuals able to treat live patients, greatly improves the outcome for patients, particularly considering the time constraints associated with this.
Perhaps one of the most significant limitations to this work has been the effective transport and housing of patients. That is why the EWT developed the first transport and treatment solution for these specific events, which we call our Vulture Ambulance, launched in 2023. This has been developed from the ground up to be a complete solution to teams working in the field, to not only house patients that have been found, but also additional equipment that may be needed in the field during assisting with these events.
By creating a single solution that is permanently kept ready to go, takes a large amount of the preparation and planning away from the responders. To date, this novel solution has been used to assist in excess of 30 vultures and has improved the survival of live patients found at poisoning sites to 98% over the last year. This is a significant improvement from previously, where some animals may have succumbed due to the ineffective housing and transport to a rehabilitation facility.
As a newer addition to this, we have developed emergency treatment kits that are specifically designed to have all needed items for the in-field treatment of birds at poisoning events. These kits contain all the materials necessary to effective respond to emergencies, including headlamps, backup batteries and radios. These are all items that we have found through field experience to be necessary for an effective and efficient response. We’re currently working towards expanding this equipment to more areas, adding yet another dimension to assisting people who respond to these events.
By understanding the process and having teams that understand how to work effectively, as well as having all the required equipment needed on site, we know that we can give vultures and other avian scavengers have a fighting chance. The only way to achieve this is through large-scale collaborations, and we look forward to developing these even further in future.