Gorongosa 2024-FULL-FINAL - Flipbook - Page 55
E NV I RO NM ENT
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GORONGOSA SP ECIAL
Vultures have a stomach of steel and can digest botulism and
anthrax with no issues.
André Botha, program manager of Vultures for Africa
at the Endangered Wildlife Trust in South Africa. If
a community has a problem with an animal, say, an
elephant or a lion, they might poison it. Once it dies,
vultures swoop in for a tasty treat and are unintentionally poisoned as well. “We’ve had incidents where literally hundreds of vultures have been killed feeding on a
single poisoned elephant carcass.”
In places where criminal groups hunt elephants to
harvest their tusks for illegal trade in ivory, or hunt
other animals without authorization, hunters might
deliberately poison vultures, nature’s narcs, to keep
their circling group from alerting authorities. Botha
says both conservationists and researchers need to
adopt a regional approach to form policies to protect
the continent’s remaining vultures. Research like Matlombe’s on the social perceptions of vultures, which
delves into the religious or belief use of vulture parts
that is common in some corners of Africa, might help
bring in more people into a regional or continent-wide
plan on vulture conservation.
Vultures, though, are hard animals to champion in a
marketplace of small and large donors who are mostly
interested in charismatic megafauna. Kaltenecker tries
to explain to donors that vultures are more than just
gross bogeymen; they are key actors in the ecosystems
they inhabit, the trash collectors of the natural world.
As Gorongosa, a model of wildlife recovery, shows, vultures have a lot of work to do.
R EFERENCES
1. Safford, R., et al. Vulture conservation: The case for urgent
action. Bird Conservation International 29, 1–9 (2019).
2. Martin, G.R., Portugal, S.J., & Murn, C.P. Visual fields,
foraging, and collision vulnerability in Gyps vultures.
International Journal of Avian Science 154, 626-631 (2012).
3. Houston, D.C. & Cooper, J.E. The digestive tract of the
white-back griffon vulture and its role in disease transmission
among wild ungulates. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 11, 306-313
(1975).
4. Krüger, S.C., et al. Old world vultures reflect effects of
environmental pollutants through human encroachment.
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 41, 1586-1603 (2022).
5. Manqele, N.S., Seiler, S.A.J., & Downs, C.T. The
ethnomedicinal use of vultures by traditional health
practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Journal of
Ornithology (2023).
6. Saidu, Y. & Buij, R. Traditional medicine trade in vulture
parts in northern Nigeria. Vulture News 65 (2013).
Jori Lewis writes about the environment and agriculture mostly
from the Global South. In 2018, she received the Whiting Grant
for Creative Nonfiction for her new book, Slaves for Peanuts.
She is also a contributing editor with Adi Magazine, a literary
magazine covering global politics. She splits her time between
Illinois and Dakar, Senegal.
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