The first Saturday in September marks International Vulture Awareness Day, intended to highlight the conservation of this ecologically vital group of birds that face a range of threats in many areas where they occur.
This year, USAID’s VukaNow Activity has lent its support to the efforts of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) to combat and reduce the impact of poisoning on vultures, as well as many other species targeted by this illegal practice.
In an innovative approach to this conservation challenge, the EWT uses vultures as their “Eye in the Sky” to alert conservation authorities to poisoning events in the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). The technology makes use of a system which transmits data from GPS-tracked vultures to monitors, enabling a more rapid response to potentially devastating incidents.
The GLTFCA is a known wildlife poisoning hotspot in southern Africa and is also home to at least five threatened vulture species severely impacted by poisoning. Several poisoning events that have taken place since 2015 have killed hundreds of vultures.
USAID said in a press release that the poaching of lions is also an emerging wildlife crime in the region. While animals such as rhinos are generally killed by shooting, and pangolins are removed by hand, the deliberate poisoning of wildlife has significantly impacted several illegally-traded species in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier landscape. In addition, many other animals become unintended victims, succumbing to poisoning after feeding on contaminated carcasses.
André Botha, programme manager with the EWT, said that “the issue is exacerbated by the poisoning of vultures as sentinel species in association with the ivory trade, and another poaching practices, as well as targeting these birds for belief-use trade in their body parts.
“Vultures are targeted, as their visible presence, with large numbers descending from the skies and perching near to, or feeding on poached wildlife, alerts law enforcement staff to poaching or poisoning events. Their remarkable sentinel function has led to the extensive persecution of vultures across the continent,” said Botha.
To date, the EWT has deployed 34 GPS-tracked vultures for the Eye in the Sky poisoning and carcass detection system in the Greater Kruger. This network of GPS-tracked birds is surveying massive areas, currently over 3.3 million hectares, across this vast wilderness landscape, enabling the team to monitor their movements and rapidly detect wildlife poisoning events.
Over the coming months, the EWT will deploy more tracking units in the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe and Limpopo National Park in Mozambique to expand their footprint into these poisoning-prone areas.
Dr Gareth Tate, Birds of Prey programme manager with the EWT, explains how the system works.
“In essence, when a vulture is killed on a poisoning scene, the immobility triggers an alert within minutes of death, allowing us to pinpoint the sites where vultures have died and respond rapidly and decontaminate the scenes to prevent further loss of vultures and other animals that would otherwise go undetected, or be detected too late.”
“It is sad that vultures have to die to detect some of these events, but by sending an early alert signal to us, they save the lives of countless other wildlife and allow us to rescue animals that have survived these poisoning events,” Tate said.
This novel approach may at first seem reactive, but it also operates in tandem with extensive work to reduce the impact of poisoning in the GLTFCA. A significant component of this is the EWT’s efforts to implement Wildlife Poisoning Strategies in key areas are backed up by training conservation and law enforcement staff in identifying and managing poisoning incidents.
Through USAID Southern Africa’s support, the EWT has conducted training with almost 500 rangers and other conservation staff at key sites in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe and plans to train significantly more before the conclusion of the project.
They have also held six awareness workshops with community liaison officers, environmental monitors, and community leaders to develop awareness materials that can be used to raise awareness among people that live in and around these protected areas of the risks associated with the consumption and use of poisoned wildlife products.
Deborah Kahatano, chief of party for USAID’s VukaNow Activity explained that one of the core objectives of the VukaNow is to increase the application of effective tools, technologies and approaches that mitigate wildlife crime, while also working closely with communities to address these issues. She said they were pleased to have played a role in supporting the EWT to undertake this crucial and exciting project.
The vision for this work is to expand the network of GPS-tracked vultures throughout poisoning hotspots across Africa and incorporate multiple partners and landscapes to uptake the "Eye in the Sky" poisoning detection system, while continuing to focus on additional proactive conservation measures to address the major indiscriminate threat of poisoning.
This includes undertaking community work and targeted workshops with traditional medicine practitioners to raise awareness around the use of poisons to harvest vulture body parts and its risks to human health and facilitating improved judiciary and law enforcement response, leading to more arrests being made.
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