Stop Wildlife Poisoning

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