Vultures: Nature’s Environmental Clean-Up Crew in Critical Danger?
I have never felt more terrified in my life than when I stepped inside the cage of the vultures at the Moholoholo Animal Rehabilitation Center. We were given the warning that these vultures are highly intelligent and like to be naughty from time to time. Their intelligence was certainly felt, I felt as if they were sizing us up and trying to see who would startle as they expanded their large wings and screeched at us. I had goosebumps all over my skin as they watched my every move, and it felt as if any wrong step could have resulted in my end. With that said, vultures are very easily misunderstood with their ugly appearance and the feeling of dread in their presence, but they are still nature’s greatest cleanup crew as they play a vital role in clearing away animal carcasses and preventing the spread of diseases like anthrax, rabies, tuberculosis, and botulism. Without them, these diseases would contaminate our water resources and more (International BirdLife). The harsh reality is that our unsung heroes are vanishing at alarming rates and are now critically endangered due to being poisoned by mankind. According to Darcy et al, poisoning animals results in 61% of vulture’s deaths, and that means our conservation strategy to save the vultures is to minimize the various reasons for animal poisonings and create a positive view of animals being worth more alive than dead.
There are multiple reasons that wild animals are being poisoned such as locals looking for protein, farmers trying to deal with what they deem as ‘problem’ animals or birds, or individuals looking to obtain animal or bird parts for unethical and illegal trade (Dealing with Wildlife Poisoning). The people at the Moholoholo Animal Rehabilitation Center informed us how they would like the poisoning of wildlife animals to stop, and their method is to inform the local farmers and community about the harm of setting poisonous traps for wild animals. They have a crew of people that work around the clock that would gladly answer a phone call to remove a wild animal safely from their farm and place them back into the wild. Another poison killing wild animals is the growing use of pesticides in farmers crops. The pesticide use regulations are inadequate and enforcement on regulation of them is very poor, and it is resulting in a lot of unintended wildlife deaths which then result in the deaths of our clean up crew of vultures. The best way to minimize the effects of unintentional wildlife deaths is to improve pesticide regulations, control distribution, better enforcement measures, and stiffer penalties for offenders (Ogada, Darcy).
The most difficult challenge we are currently facing is the poisoning of wild animals by poachers. Just recently on June 21st of 2019, more than 530 endangered vultures had been killed due to poachers poisoning the carcass of the dead animal to avoid detection from rangers (Greef, Kimon De). It was always exciting when I saw vultures in the wild, but I was also filled with fear because they served as a warning to my worst nightmare of running into poachers and finding a dead animal carcass accompanied by dead vultures. I want to say that there is a foolproof method to stop poaching and thus stop in the poisoning of wild animal carcasses, but there isn’t. It is a complex issue stemming from poverty being that the national minimum wage is $1.34 an hour and that tends to be for those who work for businesses, or else the pay is much less (National Minimum Wage). We can, however, do what the eco-village I visited named Nourish is implementing, and that is teaching children to have a love for the animals around them, and to care for their community as they get an education and work on skills as managing and maintaining a farm to be able to provide for themselves and sell their produce. By teaching the young that animals are worth more to us alive than dead and fostering the skills of entrepreneurship within their own country we may have a fighting chance against the poisoning and poaching of wild animals, and in result save them along with the critically endangered vultures.
Works Cited
International, BirdLife. “Saving Africa’s Vultures.” BirdLife, www.birdlife.org/african-vultures.
“Dealing with Wildlife Poisoning.” Http://Www.krugerpark.co.za, www.krugerpark.co.za/krugerpark-times-2-3-wildlife-poisoning.html.
Ogada, Darcy. (2014). The power of poison: Pesticide poisoning of Africa’s wildlife. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1322. 10.1111/nyas.12405.
Greef, Kimon De. “500 Vultures Killed in Botswana by Poachers’ Poison, Government Says.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 June 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/world/africa/vultures-poisoned-botswana-poachers-elephants.html.
“Everything You Need to Know about the National Minimum Wage.” Fin24, 1 Jan. 2019, m.fin24.com/Economy/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-national-minimum-wage-20190101.
Ogada, Darcy, et al. “Another Continental Vulture Crisis: Africa’s Vultures Collapsing toward Extinction.” Conservation Letters, vol. 9, no. 2, 2015, pp. 89–97., doi:10.1111/conl.12182.
