Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 54
forecast where other healthy breeding populations
might occur, within the park and outside of it. And
discovering so many in the park when the numbers of
both species are critically low across the continent is a
good indication of a healthy population.
But the threats beyond the park are many. The transformation of forests or grasslands into farmland and
urban areas means vultures have more difficulty finding
their favorite nesting trees. Power lines and windmills
pose a critical threat to the birds whose superpower
is to focus on the ground below but who have trouble
seeing dangers in front of them2; vultures regularly
get electrocuted on power lines and collide with the
blades of a wind turbine with fatal results. Although
vultures have a stomach of steel—they have a gastric
acid level that’s nearly the same as pure hydrochloric
acid,3 and can digest botulism, anthrax, and salmonella
with no issues—they are felled by anti-inflammatory
drugs that are often used on livestock.4 In addition,
across the continent, vultures are sometimes targeted
for ritual use.5, 6
Domingas Matlombe, who finished her master’s in
Gorongosa’s conservation biology program in 2022,
and collaborated with researchers from Boise State,
also found that some people in the rural communities
near Gorongosa are using vulture parts for traditional
medicine. Many healers told her that hunters bring
them already dead animals, but she was skeptical. “We
can’t assume the hunters are always so lucky as to find
dead animals,” she says. “Maybe the hunters know the
spots the vultures occur, and they are killing vultures
in order to sell them.”
Most experts say poisoning is the single largest
driver of the decline in vultures across the continent.
“Often, it’s not that they are targeted directly for extirpation, but they become the secondary victims,” says
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PI OTR NA S KR EC KI
JANITOR OF THE BUSH An endangered white-backed vulture feeds on the carcass of a newly deceased waterbuck
in Gorongosa National Park. To get the shot, Piotr Naskrecki, a conservation biologist from Harvard University, hid his
camera inside the carcass.
