Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 30 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi people! It is so disturbing that most of the birds that I have encountered poisoned during this March-April phase of my study are migrants. Just corresponds with the time when the visitors are about to take off to their breeding lands. While most of my earlier posts have depicted use of live decoys to enhance furadan poisoning, I have just witnessed another form of poisoning; using termites laced in Furadan to poison birds. This seems a form of poisoning way worse that the decoy technique, and kills indiscriminately a whole range of bird species. Decoy technique is rather restricted to African Open-billed Storks which are specialist snail feeders.
Yesterday, I watched sadly as a group of 13 meek Abdim’s Storks walked to their deaths. The poacher got his baits ready then went ahead to herd the birds where the baits had been laid. I had the opportunity to watch it all happen and this is how it all went:

The poacher is readying his poisoning gear above. Mark the purple furadan solution in the tiny container at the lower side of the photo.

Stirring to evenly mix the poisonous solution.

Spreading open of the polythene bag with termtes in readiness to mix the termites with the furadan solution.

The poacher using his bear hands to lace the termites with furadan just prior to setting out the baits and herding the Abdim’s to the bait.

The eventual death of the beautiful storks hardly an hour later!

More Abdim’s carcasses being examined by my assistant.

Surely, this pesticide is up to no good.

Tags: Abdim's Stork, furadan, Poacher, poisoning

7 responses so far

Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 28 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi. While we are priviledged to host many migrant birds from the northern tropics in our lands, it is obvious that fewer migrant birds will be going back home. I am out in Busia, Bunyala and this is the scenario. Thanks to Furadan.

Wood Sandpipers

More Sandpipers.

Yellow Wagtails.

And our  own still dying, rather, being killed in ominous numbers!

Tags: Bunyala, furadan, migrant birds

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Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 24 2009 | By: Martin Odino

So Furadan seems to have come in just to make the locals of Bunyala destructive to their bird biodiversity.
Backtracking on their origins, their folklore typifies the Banyalas (the local people) as occupational pastoralists with marked traces of hunting (including fishing) and gathering amongst ‘chosen’ family lineages.

 The photograph above was taken last month. While surveying for bird poisoning, we met the boy fishing without any special impliments. I bet passed on skills!

 The above photo shows what I saw when i took a look into the boy’s yellow container  above. Fish! No need for hook, road and bait!

Well, hunting as they say was a commercial venture especially to provide a commodity for exchange with their trading counterparts in the years back then when wild game was bountiful. But even now the hills where the game were reputed to roam are getting degraded, the vegetation just a thin shit constituted of scanty shrubbery.

Wanga Hill in the background. You can literally see the soil!Only covered in shrubs.

Thick bushes and trees were the characteristic vegetation of Bunyala. Birds, small mammals, cats; cheetahs and leopards, jackals, hyenas and even rumours of the king of the jungle, the lion (whose local name does exist) were common place.
So human population pressure set in like in many other places and man turned against his own enviroonment. With money having also been introduced as the measure of value, commercial hunters did their best too to reap the best out of the wild, both forces and pushing the natural resources to thin levels. Birds seemed not directly targeted but for the game birds. However with small mammals and land resource at their diminishing levels an unexploited resource seemed prestine just a couple of meters above them. The birds of the air, flying meat!
Furadan brought the killling of birds revolution, favouring uncontrollable large scale  poiosning of birds since the early 1980’s, even evolving into decoy-employed methodology.

Tags: Birds, Bunyala, fishing, hunting, poisoning

2 responses so far

Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 11 2009 | By: Martin Odino

While it is more obvious that there is poisoning of small to medium-sized birds using Furadan around Bunyala Rice Scheme, the larger raptors are seen to kite, soar and hover searching for their food. It is almost hard to suspect that even the birds of prey are possible victims of  Furadan posoning because; nobody directly targets raptors for poisoning and the issue of secondary poisoning by Furadan poisoning remains a debatable theory. But reality is that they too are subjects of poisoning and the locals will not spare them for a delicious accompaniment for the staple maize/millet flour preparation otherwise locally known as Ugali.

The Western Bandded Snake Eagle below was photographed perched on a tree overlooking one of the paddy stretches and where poisoning was reported to take place. The Western Banded Snake-Eagle is one of the scarce Snake-Eagles of Kenya with the preferred range of this species known around this region in Kenya. A threat by Furadan to this species in this region therefore means a big risk to this species population.

 The Western Banded Snake-Eagle is not  purely a snake-eater and will eat other non-snake prey. The eagle was overlooking the rice fields, possibly scouting for weakened birds as would be the case during smaller bird poisoning by the hunters. The other birds seen from  my team’s and the eagle’s view included Ruffs, Sandpipers and the Common Greenshank (see photo below; apologies the birds are not so distinct).

 One of our ‘bicycle transporter’ told us he had poisoned a couple of waterbirds for his evening meal with his family the previous evening. From what we showed him later on while teaching him how to use binoculars, he pointed out the birds as either Wood or Green Sandpipers which are migrants. he had used termites and laced them with Furadan. Well, it may not be possible to know exactly which migrants are at risk at the moment but we noted that quite a number of migratory birds were feeding around the rice fields. During data collection there will be acurate documentation of the same. Amongst other migrants, we observed the Blue-Cheeked Bee-eaters, Eurasian Bee-eaters, Spotted Red Shanks, Common Greenshanks, Ruffs,  Common sandpipers, Green Sandpipers and Wood Sandpipers

Tags: Bunyala Rice Scheme, furadan, migrants, raptors

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 09 2009 | By: Martin Odino

So it appears we are yet to witness the worst as Paul Redfern, author of the article Health alert over rise in bush trade in The EastAfrican has elaborated. “…rising food prices, a rash of crop failures and wide-ranging impacts of the global recession have led to a rise in bushmeat trade in Kenya.”

A pity the scenario of wild bird meat trade has not been highlighted. Thanks to the underground operations made even more so by the silent killing effects of Furadan.

It is painful to look at the bulky, shocking figures of the bushmeat exports spelling doom to Kenya’s once very rich and almost intact biodiversity. This has to stop!

Tags: bush meat trade, Kenya, The EastAfrican, wild bird meat trade

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Category: Masai Mara, carbofuran, lions | Date: Mar 06 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi. Every evening after a scorching daytime heat we would patiently doze before our lap top screens waiting for our modems to pick up some modest internet connection to enable us get online. On our last night of our reconnaisance in Bunyala, somehow we could not doze or get down to some work online.

One woman narrated how she had bought a poisoned bird for her visiting ailing nephew for a special meal for the two of them that day. Earlier on that afternoon, we had been shown how a furadan-poisoned bird meat had to be prepared to rid it of the poison. Clearly, the hunters and consumers seemed well aware of furadan’s toxicity and said the special preparation of the meat rendered it safe.

The hunter and his wife also consumers of the poison-killed bird meat insisted that the meat had to be smoked and left to dry on heat till sizzling stoped and no more fluids dripped from the meat. Normal cooking then followed and with this you were guaranteed of no intoxication from the deadly ingredient in furadan.

Smoked wild bird meat. Once cooked, locals declare it fit for human consumption

I am not convinced that this method frees the meat entirelely of the furadan toxins especially because the hunter’s wife has for a while been sick and has a walking problem. Furadan?What we know is that lions in the mara intoxicated by furadan suffered limb paralysis. At Mwea rice scheme, another poisoning hot spot, wild ducks cooked without being smoked  and consumed are blamed to cause stiffness especially in the knee joints  of humans.

Tags: Bunyala, furadan, lions, wild birds Mwea rice scheme

8 responses so far

Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 03 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi readers! I have been able to establish communication with some hunters and while I still hope to woo more into talking freely with me, the few I have interacted with are revealing a whole lot of techniques whose suitability befits the birds that a hunter is targetting.

An overview of the techniques reveals that Furadan is exclusively the only poison used to kill birds. The differential poisoning techniques then come in. These are mainly determined by the type of food and feeding modes by the different kinds of birds.
Small birds which are mainly seedeaters are poisoned by unshelled rice grain soaked in Furadan solution. This rice is scattered all over the dry rice field then flocks of seedeaters come down to pick up the grains one by one.My assistants and myself observed this method seemingly not so effective compared to the others. On one occassion, we estimated a flock of 500 mourning doves but the hunter in this case only walked away with 5 dead birds. We however noted that about 400 of these birds flew away during the waiting phase of poisoning when the hunter awaits the birds to get intoxicated, yet they had also been eating the poisoned baits.

There has been poisoning of doves in the field above for much of the week.

The second method involves employing decoys to get the attention of other birds. This method affects mostly Open-billled Storks though other birds also fall victim when the hunter opts to employ the earlier described method. This method seems the deadliest. While my data should give the actual effectiveness of this method, based on my local assistant and one hunters revelation, this method can annihilate an entire flock of Storks if the birds are not disrupted while eating. My local assistant revealed that a flock of 16 Open-billed Storks had all been killed about a week ago while one seasoned hunter attempting to poison Storks right under our noses confessed that the flock of 71 storks soaring above us could all get poisoned and killed. I must admit feeling ‘dirty’ as we peered on from our watch post without speaking up for the birds just awaiting to count the Storks that would die for purposes of getting data for my project. Well, thank God because a goat came along and startled all the storks to their flight. Further, I bet the hunters were uneasy with our presence so they abandoned their mission prematurely that day.

Live decoys used to lure others.

The third method involves putting furadan solution soaked rice put in metallic plates and put under water. I have not witnessed this method (though I hope to) because it is mostly used at planting time (its not planting time atthe moment) and targets ducks. The plates are put under water then when ducks come dabbling for food and find a lot of food in the plates under water, they gorge on these only to get overdosed with the poison-laced food and get disoriented.

Hypothetically, seedeaters are eating far less of the furadan-laced bait compared to the Storks and ducks which eat baits loaded with way more granules of furadan (snails) or more rice grains concetrated in plates under water respectively. An almost invariable confession by locals is that numbers of these bigger individuals are diving.
We have reason to fear for imminent ethological alteration in these birds; that flocks could degenerate into a handful score, then single individuals and eventually……

Keep reading.Will keep you posted.

Tags: African Mourning Dove, furadan, Open-billed Storks, poisoning, Storks

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