Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: carbofuran | Date: Oct 06 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Dear Readers,

Apologies for my irregular writing lately. Many atimes I have been confronted by unavoidable field challenges unfavourable for blogging but I will keep doing my best to fully update you whenever the opportunity allows. My posts are therefore bound to be long but interesting so please kindly hang in there and read them through.

The latest development at Bunyala Rice Irrigation Scheme is the expansion of the cultivation field at least up to twice the former size. While the current size is at least 500ha large, the paddy fields continue to be reclaimed every day extending in all directions and I am informed the locals have been advised to leave no fallow land uncultivated by the national agricultural authorities. It is expected that the rice yields will alleviate the famine situation in our country, Kenya.

A small section of the extended agricultural land. The trees to the right are part of an untended live fence to a home. Irrigation water has spread into the compounds of most surrounding homes.

Much as this establishment sounds nobly humanitarian, the farmers are pessimistic that the intensive rice growing will bring them any economic fortune on their part. They boldly proclaim being robbed of their effort-draining toiling and moiling by the irrigation board which provides rice farming inputs enticingly labeled subsidized. The farmhands (casual laborers) who also happen to be the land owners say they tediously tend and eventually harvest the crop needless to add are responsible for the daily airing and drying of the cereal at the irrigation board’s storage premises awaiting to be sold. It is the irrigation board that indeed springs back into action to sell the processed cereal when the time comes. From the sale, the irrigation board then takes back what the farmers owe them and the remaining penny is forwarded to the farmers. In the words of the farmers that I talked to, the amount is best described to range between peanuts and negative, to mean you may still owe the board especially if the crop fails and this debt is carried forward to be recovered next season.

From my research perspective, my study site is greatly altered especially the transects that I have been working in. There are more of these now and are tougher to navigate because the maiden ploughing involves ‘deep flooding’ with the water depth in the feeder canals extending up to hip high for an average Kenyan man. My assistants and myself walk the whole day to be able to survey the whole site for bird poisoning. We must admit that in a number of cases we miss out on the poisoning going on on the distal end of the study site which extends beyond the comfortable optical aided view of our binoculars.

Taking GPS readings and recording bird mortality (myself writing from a low culvert slab and my assistant close by looking on far afield; the other is the photographer)

Talking of poisoning, it is of course Furadan poisoning of birds. Much as the farmers are staggering to keep faith that their intensive rice farming should pay this season, the season has come with fairly good news of no Furadan for rice planting! It does look like someone after decades of deviance is being careful to observe the law for once of Furadan not being allowed for use in rice fields. It must follow the persistence at Wildlife Direct to question the explicit law breaking by the supplier in getting the poison to Kenyan irrigation schemes. Bravo on this move! But the pesticide is still available.

Dangerously wielded by radical bird poachers, the pesticide continues to crash populations of birds through deliberate poisoning for human consumption:

The photos below were taken 2-3 days ago.

Poisoned African Open-billed Storks in a sack

A poacher making away with dead birds in a sack

The purple colour of Furadan showing on the snail baits for the storks; the little faded shade of purple is most likely because the bait was prepared the previous day

Bounty of the birds being the migration period is not making it any better.A flock of Black-tailed Godwits.

An unrecovered carcass of a poisoned Black-tailed Godwit by the poachers; one of the cases where we missed out on a bird poisoning incident. Small fishes that come with the flood water had nibbled on the bird’s neck tissues. A larger fish would probably gulp down the whole carcass and also die.

The poachers say the Furadan is still available from sources they are not comfortable to talk about owning up only Uganda as one of these sources. The pesticide’s identity is kept top secret to any stranger and every bit of its evidence is destroyed almost as soon as it is purchased but for the poisonous granules of course. The small pack (see below: note there is no label on the container) now costs around 8.5 dollars (Ksh 600).

Nonetheless, we are still doing our best in trying to educate the poachers most of whom are torn between the vegetable farming idea and keeping on with the poaching. One factor stands in the way of those undecided. Furadan availability! The good news is a number are increasingly becoming convinced that vegetable farming might just be a better idea and one has offered to look for a piece of land where we can start from.

An education session: Poachers peering at knowledge in my guide book

Please keep reading. I will be giving you more poisoning updates inclusive of a video clip of how storks are beaten to their death and captured once disoriented by Furadan poison shortly.

Technorati : Bunyala Rice Irrigation Scheme, Furadan, Kenya, Poisoning, Wildlife Direct

Tags: Bunyala Rice Irrigation Scheme, furadan, Kenya, poisoning, Wildlife Direct

2 responses so far

Category: carbofuran | Date: Jul 04 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Informant reportings from colleagues visiting Ahero in the past have always been that doves are being killed using Furadan for human consumption. Well it looks these are just ‘hard times’ targets when vegetables are hard to come by to suppliment the staple starch meal which is ground corn cooked into a stodgy cake-like lump.

The sight of ducks in my guide book to the locals evokes memories of delicious meals graced by the wild birds-the tree ducks. The residents of Ahero are quick to point out that the birds are ‘fat and tasty’. One boy went on to described how just a fortnight ago he baited about 10 ducks and in 5 minutes he had meat to be shared by the entire extended family homestead. He soaked rice in Furadan solution and added mud in the mxture to make it look like left over rice from harvesting. Both species of Tree Ducks fell victims-White-faced Whistling Ducks and the Fulvous whistling Ducks. He then gave me directions to the site where he had poisoned the Ducks and true I found a number of their kind in the flooded rice plot.

Comparing Bunyala Rice Irrigation Scheme, Mwea Rice Irrigation Scheme and Ahero Rice Irrigation Scheme, I must say I have counted a modest number of Tree Ducks, otherwoise Whistling Ducks in Ahero; at one plot measuring about a quarter an acre, 29 strong of Fulvous whistling Ducks and 23 White-faced Whistling Ducks and these the people said were too few to poison bear in mind there are other tree ducks in other flooded plots.

White-faced Tree Ducks in the background, Fulvous Tree Ducks in the foreground

More Fulvous Tree Ducks

More White-faced Tree Ducks

Unlike in Bunyala where for months now the most I counted at a site which was about the only site, I only got half a dozen at the most. In Mwea, I only counted solitary individuals mostly averaging a bird a day. I can infer that Bunyala and Mwea have seen intense poisoning by Furadan compared to Ahero. In the former two sites, the ducks are poisoned to be sold to the available local market. In Ahero, poisoning corresponds with huge flocking by the bird and is virtually for domestic consumption rather than for sale. Everyone has an idea of how to poison using Furadan and sets out bait when the birds are in large numbers at planting. It is eating wild meat that is in season; it is only sad that the method used is not absolutely safe. Cases of accidental human poisoning from feeding on poison because one did not wash hands well after handling Furadan are known though isolated but known nonetheless.

Locals are well versed with other methods of killing wild birds pointing out one traditional method which employs a rod ending in encyclic hooks to maximize on the kill. A crude method but safer in the sense that the meat is not intoxicated and the birds killed are way fewer. But Furadan came in with rice planting and as a result a lazier way to kill the birds developed, more productive in bulk killing but involving handling of the poisoninus substance, Furadan.

Tags: Ahero Rice irrigation Scheme, Bunyala Rice Irrigation Scheme, furadan, Mwea Rice Irrigation Scheme, poisoning

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