Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Hi. During these couple of days that I have been in the field I have attempted to paistakingly solicit for information without altering the status quo. I am even paying greater attention to my intution if it would only be a scientific field methodology!

Bird life around Bunyala Rice Scheme appears bountiful especially for the doves, in particular for the African Mourning Dove as the majority succulent Euphorbia tree stand tops appear grey-coloured. The pseudogrey should hopefully augur well for the pigeon family members. But a weighty,  ill, sense of premonition sets in when just above you in the heavens, a seemingly moderately bountiful flock of storks in flight has one of its members tagging along a crippled, dangling leg rather than a horizontally, fully stretched out leg typical of a normal stork in flight.

Apologies if the photo above is not so clear. A close look at the birds flying to the extreme left of the photo shows one bird’s wings forming a deep V. The bird just beneath it is the one with a dangling limb. Most likely, this bird survived a ‘furadan massacre’ when birds are ambushed following disorientation after eating poisoned bait.

I met and spoke to a hunter yesterday and the photos below show what these birds are going through!

These captive birds have snails spread about the floor of this shack that is not as close to being their natural home. These keep them alive but not at all happy as you can see.They await to lure others! I wrote on a similar scenario in an earlier post.  

The yellow container cut open above to ease extraction of the snails (appearing as dark boluses) from it to be laced with furadan once held cooking oil in it. These snails have been picked up by the hunter for his mission. I counted a flock of precisely 71 Open-billed Storks and was curious how many of these this consignment of snail ballistics would bring down. I learnt from the hunters honest opinion that all could be poisoned in an instant!It is that easy for the big birds all to fall to their death since poisoning these individuals involves heavy dosage with the chemical after which their hulky bodies are hard to carry away. Such is the killing efficiency of Furadan!