Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: carbofuran | Date: Mar 03 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi readers! I have been able to establish communication with some hunters and while I still hope to woo more into talking freely with me, the few I have interacted with are revealing a whole lot of techniques whose suitability befits the birds that a hunter is targetting.

An overview of the techniques reveals that Furadan is exclusively the only poison used to kill birds. The differential poisoning techniques then come in. These are mainly determined by the type of food and feeding modes by the different kinds of birds.
Small birds which are mainly seedeaters are poisoned by unshelled rice grain soaked in Furadan solution. This rice is scattered all over the dry rice field then flocks of seedeaters come down to pick up the grains one by one.My assistants and myself observed this method seemingly not so effective compared to the others. On one occassion, we estimated a flock of 500 mourning doves but the hunter in this case only walked away with 5 dead birds. We however noted that about 400 of these birds flew away during the waiting phase of poisoning when the hunter awaits the birds to get intoxicated, yet they had also been eating the poisoned baits.

There has been poisoning of doves in the field above for much of the week.

The second method involves employing decoys to get the attention of other birds. This method affects mostly Open-billled Storks though other birds also fall victim when the hunter opts to employ the earlier described method. This method seems the deadliest. While my data should give the actual effectiveness of this method, based on my local assistant and one hunters revelation, this method can annihilate an entire flock of Storks if the birds are not disrupted while eating. My local assistant revealed that a flock of 16 Open-billed Storks had all been killed about a week ago while one seasoned hunter attempting to poison Storks right under our noses confessed that the flock of 71 storks soaring above us could all get poisoned and killed. I must admit feeling ‘dirty’ as we peered on from our watch post without speaking up for the birds just awaiting to count the Storks that would die for purposes of getting data for my project. Well, thank God because a goat came along and startled all the storks to their flight. Further, I bet the hunters were uneasy with our presence so they abandoned their mission prematurely that day.

Live decoys used to lure others.

The third method involves putting furadan solution soaked rice put in metallic plates and put under water. I have not witnessed this method (though I hope to) because it is mostly used at planting time (its not planting time atthe moment) and targets ducks. The plates are put under water then when ducks come dabbling for food and find a lot of food in the plates under water, they gorge on these only to get overdosed with the poison-laced food and get disoriented.

Hypothetically, seedeaters are eating far less of the furadan-laced bait compared to the Storks and ducks which eat baits loaded with way more granules of furadan (snails) or more rice grains concetrated in plates under water respectively. An almost invariable confession by locals is that numbers of these bigger individuals are diving.
We have reason to fear for imminent ethological alteration in these birds; that flocks could degenerate into a handful score, then single individuals and eventually……

Keep reading.Will keep you posted.

Tags: African Mourning Dove, furadan, Open-billed Storks, poisoning, Storks

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Category: carbofuran | Date: Feb 28 2009 | By: Martin Odino

Hi. During these couple of days that I have been in the field I have attempted to paistakingly solicit for information without altering the status quo. I am even paying greater attention to my intution if it would only be a scientific field methodology!

Bird life around Bunyala Rice Scheme appears bountiful especially for the doves, in particular for the African Mourning Dove as the majority succulent Euphorbia tree stand tops appear grey-coloured. The pseudogrey should hopefully augur well for the pigeon family members. But a weighty,  ill, sense of premonition sets in when just above you in the heavens, a seemingly moderately bountiful flock of storks in flight has one of its members tagging along a crippled, dangling leg rather than a horizontally, fully stretched out leg typical of a normal stork in flight.

Apologies if the photo above is not so clear. A close look at the birds flying to the extreme left of the photo shows one bird’s wings forming a deep V. The bird just beneath it is the one with a dangling limb. Most likely, this bird survived a ‘furadan massacre’ when birds are ambushed following disorientation after eating poisoned bait.

I met and spoke to a hunter yesterday and the photos below show what these birds are going through!

These captive birds have snails spread about the floor of this shack that is not as close to being their natural home. These keep them alive but not at all happy as you can see.They await to lure others! I wrote on a similar scenario in an earlier post.  

The yellow container cut open above to ease extraction of the snails (appearing as dark boluses) from it to be laced with furadan once held cooking oil in it. These snails have been picked up by the hunter for his mission. I counted a flock of precisely 71 Open-billed Storks and was curious how many of these this consignment of snail ballistics would bring down. I learnt from the hunters honest opinion that all could be poisoned in an instant!It is that easy for the big birds all to fall to their death since poisoning these individuals involves heavy dosage with the chemical after which their hulky bodies are hard to carry away. Such is the killing efficiency of Furadan!

Tags: Doves, furadan, hunter, Open-billed Storks, poisoning, snails

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