Stop Wildlife Poisoning

A dog’s death is causing serious concern in Orleans! Though the poisoning ruling is based on clear symptoms by the dog suggesting anticoagulant rodenticide poisoning rather than toxicological analysis, this just shows how sensitive and animal welfare mindful the Orleans community is. We have lost at least 58 big cats amongst many other wildlife in hardly a decade and seemingly nobody is moved!

Recreating our blog’s banner below, poisoning defines the transition from rich, beautiful,living WILDLIFE to scary, dead WILDDEAD! This is where our insensitivity is taking us!

It is impressive that Health Canada has implemented a number of measures to guard the citizens as relates to rodenticide and pesticide use. In a number of areas in Kenya, poisoning of particularly birds is on-going at the ‘poachers’ expense. Kenyan bird meat consumers continue enjoying especially carbofuran-killed wild fowl meat without fear of toxic effects against them. I should fear a chemical that has a reputation of killing anything from a lion to the flies that suck the fluids effusing from the decomposing lion’s carcass. But I would not mind if a trial on the pesticide carbofuran baited bird going back to some years before many of my generation were born did not result in the death of the ‘guinea pigs’ then, who happened to be our parents’ generation. But where is the medical proof that they did or did not suffer from the effects of lethal carbofuran? Who knows if for sure somebody having died from severe diarrhoea did not contract the diarrhoea after a bite of poisoned meat, or the violent seizures that shook a juvenile to his death were not a violent epileptic feat, but the toxic effects of poisoned fowl after giving the child the lion’s share by its parents to boost his growth to a strong adult. Who even cares to tell them of the lethal effects of the chemicals anyway when the appointed bodies sit tight and complacent that the instruction labels are sufficient. What is more is that the instructions are lacking. Yet Kenyans are not a traditionally an English-speaking community. What of the storage and usage security? A frank statement by a user to the manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of pesticides, in essence poisons that “If we’re going to sell this stuff, we should make sure it’s sold to us properly with proper instructions,”

Reading on the Orleans’s poisoning story, one consumer/user acknowledges that relying on pesticide administration by individuals is not good enough. Kenya’s wildlife is at risk where it has sometimes become a ‘pest’ in certain instances such as where lions attack livestock etc. Yet again we have insufficient control of such cases thereby driving the livestock owners to act in anger and frustration in many cases ending up even in unintended wildlife target death.

One animal welfare personnel rules that the best way to avoid accidental poisoning is to avoid using poison altogether. Poisons are not a way to deal with wildlife. Though many fingers are rightly pointing to the manufacturers and pesticide issues custodians who have the herculean role to bring changes to this wildlife poisoning problem, we all have a role to play.

I am all set for a carcass collection at one target site in Kenya where poisoning is to happen quite soon. I know I will get casualties there and it is sad that I cannot stop it. It is sad that I will be getting samples to prove that Furadan is finishing our wildlife. It is painful that the pesticide custodians who should be the ones out there assessing the situation and doing everything right to control their pesticide product which has turned rogue will be awaiting for my findings only to challenge the finding’s credibility. I am worried that this evidence might only attain the status of being ‘enough’ after the only remaining lions are creeping on their bellies with lack of psychomotor coordination, all vultures will have fallen off the skies, while there will be no twilight laughter from the jovial hyenas!

All our posts have been centered on large animals, illustrating carbofuran poisoning in lions, hyenas and vultures. The explanation behind this lies in effective exposure to the chemical pesticide.Their mode of feeding-carnivorous and scavenging -therefore accords these organisms the highest vulnerability. This just proves that ingestion or swallowing is the most effective way of getting the toxic substance into a living organisms body system. Further, fish have also been reported to have been killed through Furadan poisoning, other birds (non-vulturine), wildebeests, warthogs, crocodiles, just to mention those.

Clearly, out of the 8 divisions (technically and more precisely reffered to as phyla, these are sponges, worms, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) of the members of the Animal Kingdom, it is not just fish,mammals,birds and reptiles that are suffering but also the other mentioned in brackets but sponges. Only the sponges can be said at a lower risk given that they are oceanic rather than part of inland biodiversty. The large volume of the oceanic waters in which they are found also confers them some safety since it would require more carbofuran than can be produced on earth at the present time to get the waters concentrated eneough to destroy the sponges. This post will therefore focus on alleged or reported highly suspected carbofuran poisoning cases for smaller or inconspicuous or ignored animals.

Insects and their likes, which constitute the division (phylum) Arthropoda-the largest animal group constituting 95% of the animals- in as much as pesticides are designed to kill them, I would say, have been ignored. I believe no organism is too abundant not to be destroyed altogether or be driven to extinction. In one of the posts in another of wildlife direct’s blogs, there were lions reported to have died from Furadan poisoning. Shockingly but also reported nonetheless was that flies that came to get tit bits of the fouled carcasses also died on their meal. Well, I have also been able to get reports that Honey bees have died of Furadan poisoning in Naivasha and Kitui, Kenya. Honey bees not only make a highly nutritious and medicinal substance, honey ,but they are also very important in pollination of our rops and other plants. In Naivasha, Kenya, Furadan is used to kill termites and is proclaimed even more effective than the pesticides intended to kill termites. In Busia, Bunyala, the Leech was a feared worm by the paddy field workers and the blood sucker would stick on one’s upper legs and suck blood till one used a knife to cut it off. Though a worm, it falls in a different category and it poses no threat to rice or any other crop. Presently, the farmers have noted the worm has declined and not as common as it used to be in the paddy fields. A few cannot stop thinking that  Furadan may be behind the decline in the leech numbers.

If I recall clearly, carbofuran is branded a nematicide. But what has been witnessed is an indiscriminate mortality situation cutting across the entire animal kingdom. Carbofuran leaves a lot to be desired as far as its pesticidal role is concerned. It is a chemical pesticide that leaves many questions unanswwered such as if it can cause secondary poisoning and the scope of the broad spectrum of living things that it can wipe out. There is great need for more intensive testing of the effects of the pesticide and if at all it has to remain in use as a pesticide, it should prove its ‘innocence’ and subsequently may be win again the confidence of wildlife conservationists.