Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 11 2008 | By: Martin

Hi. I am trying to pick out every possible poisoning area in Kenya without spending a lot of time figuring out which of the many are likely. Going to each is obviously absurd. There is great urgency to quickly expose and get to work-create awareness and monitor on all areas where wildlife poisoning is going on. I am therefore devising a formula to help Wildlife Defect’s Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force save on time and get quickly to a likely poisoning site. Based on this criterion, I will come up with a map showing exhaustively all the possible local wildlife poisoning hotspots.

For the past few months (hardly 1 year) I have been out begging people to tell me if they are poisoning (biased to carbofuran) animals in their areas. A tough thing for any human being to do; confessing to a wrong doing. It makes this job ridiculous for those of us in it. Nonetheless, some results have been forthcoming. In the process, I have been able to establish some relationships in factors which upon interacting, then most likely there is wildlife poisoning in the area. The sites where I visited are Kisii, Nairobi, Machakos, Naivasha, Kajiado, Isiolo, Maralal and Busia. In all these sites, poisoning was reported, though of various degrees. These were factors pointing to poisoning in an area:

1. Farming activities (F) – Preferably this should be mixed farming. This was the case in all the sites.

2. Focus of carbofuran use (FC)-Usually an area of large scale commercial crop farming will lead to a centralized grande supply of the pesticide chemical. This was observed in Naivasha and Busia; commercial flower farming and commercial rice growing respectively.

3. Conflict or ‘Misplaced’ Crisis [fatal] (C) - Misplaced implies unusual in this case. Conflict is almost entirely only human-wildlife conflict. Crisis may be hunger (resulting from persistent crop failure due to poor farming methods or failure of rainfall). Vermin infestation may also be classified as crisis with reported victims being domestic carnivores turned rogue (in Kisii where a dog had rabies and Kajiado where a veterinarian poisoned rabied dogs), rodents (‘rat kill’ around Nairobi-in Kikuyu-and controlling squirrel’s in planting fields in Machakos) and unusual vermin such as cases of dogs breaking and feeding on soft maize crop; Warthogs feeding on crops and making burrows in planted fields. I do not include insect pests as misplaced crisis because this is the ONLY case that accords proper use of the chemical.

4. Remoteness (R)-If a site is away from a major carbofuran distributing town or focus of carbofuran use (FC), it is very likely that the pesticide is little known e.g. in Isiolo and Maralal.

The formular is therefore:

F+FC+C-R = Poisoning in the area

Or simplified,

F+C=Poisoning in the area

FC+C =Poisoning in the area

The following quiz will just help me test the accurateness of my formulae above. Please attempt it: Each equation has an answer from one of these: poisoning, no poisoning or impossible.

NB: If a factor does not appear in the equation, it means the factor is not experienced.

F+R=

FC+R=

C+FC+F=

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Tags: , carbofuran, poisoning, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, Wildlife Direct