May 15 2008
Another example of wildlife deaths through legal use of carbamates
Ngaio is right that proving wildlife mortalities are caused by the legal use of Furadan must be a strong legal argument for banning it. There was a tragic incident of rare Angolan black and white colobus monkeys in Diani, Kenya, being accidentally poisoned recently by a carbamate. This was first reported by the Colobus Trust on the PAWI blog on Facebook. Part of the work that the Colobus Trust does is to provide veterinary care to injured primates. On the 8th December 2007 they were brought two dead colobus monkeys, with no obvious signs of injury. One was an adult male & the other was a pregnant adult female. 
The Trust suspected poisoning so took stomach content samples to the government chemist in the nearby town of Nyali. The chemist reported back that the samples tested positive for the presence of a carbamate group. Apparently a nearby hotel used an insecticide on their bourganvillia to prevent greenfly infestations. The Trust concluded that the colobus must have eaten the leaves of the sprayed plants and ingested enough chemical to kill them. It makes me wonder how often this has happened before in the area? The colobus population in Diani is on the decline, mainly due to loss of habitat, and does not need an additional source of mortality that could so easily be avoided.
Jophie
7 responses so far
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This is shocking. Please report it to the PCPB Jophie
Horrible news…are there viable non-toxic alternatives in regard to pesticides? Please forgive me, if this has already been discussed…I am a bit behind on this blog…
Paula, I agree, this is scary. I wonder if Gwili (Colobus Trust) could hold a meeting with the local hotel management, to educate them on this issue. Primates will often ingest clay or charcoal to absorb toxins from some plants that otherwise, have a nutritional value to them. Of course, this must be readily available, to them.
So terrible…….god I hope this will stop!
Yes I’ll report this to the Pest Control Products Board, and will find out what follow-up Gwilli has done
Oh my goodness. This is so very sad - such a beautiful colobus.
Yes the local hotels must be made aware of this and alternatives used to rid their plants of bad infestations.
Hmmm, I posted a response here last week, but it did not show up…I wonder what happened? Anyway, this is just terrible…I am wondering if there are non-toxic alternatives to the insecticides being used on these plants?