Stop Wildlife Poisoning

This morning we saw a couple of birds glide towards the nearby wetland for their early morning meal. I immediately knew it was ominous. The continuous stream of birds to one site would just be a lead for the poachers for a kill at the poaching grounds. I knew that the poachers deprived of a poaching opportunity for a while must have observed the signs earlier than anybody else and were already out laying bait by the wetland or would be doing so soon enough.

I was right. As we scouted around before heading to the direction that the birds had headed to, a familiar poacher passed us heading in that direction. Trotting in his speedy gait were two youngsters-his children, my assistant informed me. Check the photos below. Sorry they are not very clear because the guy and his train were wheezing past and away!

the kid in the reddish shirt is carrying the decoy stork.

The dad offered to shield the stork from us by taking it from the son.

As the poacher approached the wetland and was almost obscure to our sight, some loud voices met him and brought him to a stop. Other poachers had reached the site before him and quickly harshly asked him to vacate the premises and not disrupt the flock of 25 birds that were feeding on the Furadan poison bait. Faced by all this antagonism, the poacher and his budding apprentices turned away and set off hopefully to another promising site for poisoning.

We watched on in awe and wondered whether we should approach the poachers. They seemed really agitated. A few minutes passed by and loud murmurs were carried by the westerly winds in our direction. One poacher swore by the heavens that if my assistant and myself were out to arrest them, then we would have to arrest his father first who introduced him to poaching.

I thought it wise to head to the poachers who were ignorantly misinformed and did not see themselves poisoning others and themselves. 12 big birds were down! but luckily, I was lent an ear and explained that I am doing a study on birds and the poisoning of the birds for human consumption was worrying, given that the pesticide they were using had been banned in other countries where it had been proven harmful even when correctly applied.

Poachers with sacks packed with Furadan poisoned birds; some lying on the ground, and a bucket for carrying bait

The poachers lamented of hard times, but slowly we got to constructive talk including their acknowledgement that Furadan is deadly toxic. It then came up by chance that one had attempted poisoning birds using Mocap, given that Furadan supply was becoming scanty by the day. No luck in killing birds and the poacher described that the ‘new whitish – grey poison was ineffectives oin bird poisning let alone too pungent while mixing it up.

Vegetable farming, they agreed sounded pleasant, but they said we still needed to talk more.

Honestly Ithink things would be better if Furadan supply stopped altogether. The black market supply keeps some of the poachers enmeshed in the rigid mentality of poisoning, otherwise my ideas would be broadly welcome if the choice of poisoning using Furadan was eliminated altogether.

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