Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: carbofuran | Date: Sep 09 2008 | By: Martin

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.

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Tags: amphibians, animal kingdom, arthropoda, Birds, bodiversity, carbofuran, fish, fishtoxic, honey bees, hyenas, insects, lions, mammals, reptiles, sponges, Tanzania, termitesKenya, vultures, Wildlife Direct, wildlife poisoning, worms

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Category: Hippopotamus, Organophosphates, Pesticides, carbofuran, lions | Date: Sep 08 2008 | By: Martin

Hi,

Secondary poisoning refers to when a consumer gets intoxicated by eating another organism that has the poison in its system.

Secondary poisoning is known in a number of other chemical pesticides for instance organophosphates. In carbofuran, a carbamate, it is argued whether or not secondary poisoning actually does occur.

It is a known fact that carbofuran is a sleek killer especially in birds. It is also true that organisms with bigger body mass die after a longer time compared to animals with smaller body mass which die faster. I have witnessed small seed-eating birds succumb to carbofuran within 5 minutes while bigger Storks may take up to half an hour or more. In simple explanation,the chemical must get incorporated in the consumer’s tissues and if this consumer dies and is predated upon by another which in the process also gets intoxicated, then secondary poisoning is said to have occured.

There have been reported cases of possible secondary poisoning in Kenya: lions getting intoxicated after feeding on poisoned hippopotamus, vultures after feeding on poisoned carnivore. Today I talked to a senior scientist in a prominent organization who pointed out that after working it out with the chief vet of their wildlife conservation organization, the Lethal Dose (LD) required to kill a hippo is actually much lower compared to the hippo’s body mass. So, some some granules of carbofuran sprinkled on the grass will intoxicate the hippo (and any other herbivore) and even though the lethal dose required to kill the hippo is not attained, the dose may well be enough to kill a wild dog. Nonetheless, my reasoning in the lions getting intoxicated by the alleged carbofuran poisoning of the hippos is that the hippo may have taken much more of the carbofuran and while this may have paralysed the hippos nervous system, not all of it was ‘used’. Therefore, the ‘excess’ carbofuran that circulated in the hippo while still alive and was not ‘used’ in paralysing the nervous system of the hippo got to its tissues and the amount being equal or more than the lion’s lethal dose (the lion’s whose mass may just be about a quarter of the hippos) got the lions got intoxicated.

If that is so and if it is man who had eaten the hippo(as he has been known to in some places), then may be he would have probably succumbed to the poisoning much faster than the lions. Still on man, as earlier said, I have seen Storks take over 30 minutes before dying after eating Carbofuran-laced snails. Man eats these guys regularly. Since the similar organophosphates’ poisoning results to chronic/persistent effects in wildlife and people, there might be chronic effects due to carbamates as well and cumulatively, these could be catastrophic. I cannot avoid worrying that in the long run, most of our wildlife and man are actually already intoxicated and continue to be by carbofuran.

Just a thought for the day!

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Tags: , carbofuran, lions, Organophosphates, Pesticides, secondary poisoning, vultures

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 30 2008 | By: Martin

Hi all,

In Kenya, some infuriated pastoralists have been known to set out poisoned bait to nab the culprits that killed their stock. It is however a crude technique since nobody herds the lions (other carnivores) towards the poisoned bait so that in the end the real culprit is the one condemnmed to death when he feeds on the fouled food. More oftenly, other innocent victims fall victims of the poisoning as well.

Farmers in “America’s Salad Bowl” are turning into hunters _ stalking wild pigs, rabbits and deer _ to keep E. coli and other harmful bacteria out of their fields. It’s part of an intense effort to prevent another disaster like the 2006 spinach contamination that killed three people, sickened 200 and cost the industry $80 million in lost sales. Spinach grower Bob Martin has even poisoned ponds with copper sulfate to kill frogs that might get caught in harvesting machinery or carry salmonella on their webbed feet.

It is a sad affair especially because the exact source of the contamination was never discovered, but scientists suspected cattle, feral pigs, or other wildlife may have spread the E. coli by defecating near crops.

We are not just talking of killing wildlife or amphibians. Native trees and plants are being uprooted as well and fences being erected to make the land inhospitable to wildlife. It is an entire ecosystem destruction. Couldnt the analysts and experts find out the real reason behind the vegetable poisoning? must it be that one (actually several) be destroyed to save another? May be these organisms being destroyed are not responsible for the contamination.

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Tags: amphibians, Carnivores, cattle, copper sulfate, E.coli, ecosystem, feral pigs, frogs, Kenya, lions, pastoralists, poison, Wildlife

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Category: lions | Date: Jun 16 2008 | By: Martin

This is an not new information but it’s still interesting. I just found out that in 2006 six rare Abyssinian lion cubs were poisoned in a zoo because authorities could not afford to feed them. However, Muhedin Abdulaziz, the administrator at the Lion Zoo in the capital, Addis Ababa, said “The dead cubs were sold to taxidermists for $170 each to be stuffed and sold as ornaments”.

Apparently federal wildlife officials monitored the poisoning, which they said “was painless”.

Ok, what messed up zoo will poison their own animals, and what kind of freak wants to buy a stuffed poisoned lion cub!?

Please help us stop this  kind of abuse. Support the team  that aims to Stop Wildlife  Poisoning.

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Tags: Ethipian zoo, lions, Poisoning wildlife

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