Stop Wildlife Poisoning

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