Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: carbofuran | Date: Jul 17 2008 | By: Martin Odino

Hi. It is a bright thursday 17/07/2008 afternoon unlike the many gloomy, cloudy afternoons that have been since last month. I am perched on my seat looking across a broad window overlooking one of Nairobi’s upper middle class surburbs, otherwise called Hurlingham. As I contemplate where to begin, a Black Kite flies by in my view, twisting and turning its tail, a diagnostic manouvre of the fork-tailed raptor. I then remember the nesting Peregrine Falcon I saw this morning on a high neighbouring building just astride from where Willife Direct’s offices are situated. It then hits me that these guys are safe in town! A Marabou Stork is gliding past as I type.

Alas! the Marabou Storks only two decades ago were birds of the wild. They roamed and scavenged of the carcases in the savannah expanse. Well they still do but most of them have now moved into town. If you happen to be in Nairobi City, and especially as you get into town from our local major airport, the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, you will pass by a section of town called Nyayo Stadium(known from the respective stadium) and witness a spectacle of big nests on Acacia trees. This is the largest nesting site of the urbanized storks in Nairobi. The birds have muted excreta on the tarmac, looking smudged after zooming automobiles splash the fresh, pasty substance. The walls of the surrounding buildings are also stained with white cascading trails of the same. Though not entirely free from human persecution, especially from the street urchins who may pick up the weakend old or sick individuals and subject them to teasing and physical torture, the birds are generally comfortable and safe at the judgement of any onlooker. Still, the people around Nyayo stadium seem to have learnt to tolerate the birds and will hardly notice them. My whole point is that the giant birds are safer compared to what is befalling their scavenging mates-the vultures-in the wild.

The Marabou Storks are scavengers and will be seen scavenging alongside vultures and hyenas. Of all the local cases reported of vultures poisoned by carbofuran, I cannot pin-point one that documented Marabou Storks as well, yet these scavenge together in the wild. But I think their ‘humility’ has spared them from the ill fate of this calamity. The Marabous will post sentry as the stronger eagles, vultures and hyenas tussle over the meal of carcass. May be by the time they get the morsel of the whole the carbofuran-laced layer of the carcass is already cleared off by the stronger birds and hyenas. Well, may be this tough competition is one of the factors that led to the coming into town by these giant storks. Nonetheless, I feel though an ambitious move, partly the birrds were saved from the ongoing massacre of their colleagues-vultures-by the killer carbofuran.

Many rate this stork as the ugliest scene of the birds, but the bird has a reputation for being a cleaner of the environment. It will eat decomposing carcasses and most disposables that would be unpalatable even to wild dogs. But their settlement in town does not mean they have moved to absolute safety.Since the birds will be seen to forage in large numbers at dumping sites, at sewage pond ‘wetlands’ and any other filthy sites, still there is menace that the birds could get poisoned by industrial poisons or toxins if these are discharged at their foraging sites. For now, they are safer from carbofuran poisoning than they would be if they were all out in the savannah.

Tags: Black Kite, carbofuran, eagle, hyena, Marabou Stork, Peregrine Falcon, Wildlife Direct