Lessons from China milk poisoning for the Kenyan situation
Category: carbofuran | Date: Oct 01 2008 | By: Martin
Melamine-contaminated milk poisoning in China as we now know did not begin with the epidemic of kidney stones in human kids that reached us just a couple of weeks ago. Gorilla babies, orangoutans and a lion cub have followed suit. Many more animals that rely on the mammary gland effusion must have fallen victim as well. I have not heard of the baby Pandas which should be also in China’s zoos, thanks God! Hopefully this is not being kept from the world. Such a trend assumed by the melamine poisoning only evokes fear and abomination!
The real reason that the poisoning reality was suppressed as is highlighted is that so that the privilege of hosting the Olympic Games would not be taken away. China seems to have been wrestling to conceal a violent turbulence of intoxicants for a while. This year’s Olympic games host managed to ‘contain’ the problem of atmospheric pollution that had also threatened its being the games’ host and now the melamine catastrophe that was apparently successfully contained in the secretive bag but which has raptured open letting loose the reality as scores of Kidney Stones diseased humans and wildlife alike. What is worse is that much of the entire world may have already had a taste of the harmful intoxicants.
The temptation to conceal an evil because it will ruin an imminent fortune is high but in most cases turns out more harmful than useful. China has seen a ban on many of its exports by many of its largest importers of its products and even the fortune acquired during the Olympics may cancel out with the loses on imports and the health investment towards the threatened human and wildlife residents.
Statements against our revelations on Furadan wildlife poisoning such as, “when you proclaim before the whole world that Kenya’s wildlife in parks is threatened by Furadan is putting the tourism industry at risk and portraying a bad image of our country” are very common amongst the guys that should be in the fore front in addressing the problem of Furadan poisoning to our wildlife. For some reason, they would rather have the wildlife fetch revenue, despite the ongoing depopulation of the animals in the background. At WildlifeDirect, through the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, we are trying to take measures that will stop the country from the possible disgrace of losing our wildlife particularly carnivores and birds, and even humans to Furadan. We are washing our torn, dirty linen while asking for its washing and mending rather than to have the world laugh at us. We are still asking for your support. This month and next month are particularly crucial in the sense that they are likely to be characterised by marked poisoning incidences especially in rice-growing areas, being the start of the planting season. Our financial resources are still low yet we want to begin awareness as a vital bird/wildlife poisoning pace reducing tool during our surveys as we seek a long-term solution to Furadan poisoning. In an earlier post, I put up our 1 year, $20000 budget. I believe through your support we can curb this imminent carnivore/scavenger loss that could lead to banning by our greatest importers of our commodity (tourism) in their market. Yet in this case, the wildlife loss may be irreversible!
Thank you very much those of you who have been supporting this Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign. Please keep reading our blog for the latest poisoning news.
Tags: China, furadan, gorilla, intoxicant, Lion, melamine, Orangoutan, poison, pollution, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, Wildlife Direct
Call for your support
Category: Pesticides, carbofuran | Date: Sep 06 2008 | By: Martin
Hi all,
This year (2008) began with a vexing outrage of poisoning incidences in Kenya, leading to the Wildlife Poisoning meeting organized by Wildlife Direct at the end of April, 2008. The landmark outcome of the meeting was the formation of a Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force.
The Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force having met for the first time last month agreed on a number of issues that are slowly gaining momentum of implimenntation. Generally, it emerged from our Task Force meeting and from the responses (from relevant stakeholders including government departments) to our complains (including Dr. Richard Leakey’s call for ban of carbofuran) about carbofuran’s significance in Kenya’s wildlife mortality that there is need for intensive information data collection(already significantly done) and toxicological analytical proof results implicating carbofuran.
The Task Force team is constituted of a multi-conservation and regulation organizations member merger whose contribution to the course of the stop wildlife poisoning campaign is highly time-restricted. Therefore, while their expertise is crucial, it can only be applicable in an intermittent manner. We therefore agreed that we would employ the services of students to collect data and animal carcass samples known/suspeccted to have died from poisoning under supervision by myself with technical consultation and advice from the Task Force who will also surely be out there whenever they can to ensure satisfactory outcome of our poisoning data gathering that will give stronger back up evidence for Carbofuran poisoning in Kenya. The same will also apply for the legal issues as concerns pesticides regulation on distribution and use. In summary, please see the table, anti-wildlife-poisoning-campaign-budget.pdf.
Your contributions are most welcome. Please kindly support us in the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign.
Thanks for reading our blog and please keep checking it out.
Tags: , carbofuran, Dr. Richard Leakey, Kenya, poisoning, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, Wildlife Direct
Toxic Chemicals are all around and all round
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 24 2008 | By: Martin
Hi all,
We are now struggling with pushing on with the implimentation of the outcomes of the just convened meeting of the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force at Wildlife Direct, Nairobi, Kenya . We still hope Richard Leakey’s call for ban of carbofuran will yield a reasonable response from the government. Meanwhile we are trying to make headways with a review of all that concerns carbofuran which is essentially our mission. Hopefully, we will garner enough of more of the necessary evidence (of course in addition to what we already have) against carbofuran to get everybody’s attention and only justifiably lay to rest the chemical that clearly is dangerously outliving its time. I say enough of more necessary evidence because we hope it will not be deemed insufficient. I just do not know when the evidence will be sufficient to the local and international custodians of this chemical and many others. What it means is that the chemical continues to act out there both in its good ways (limited since even proper use is harmful; EPA will agree with me) and limitless lethal toxic ways. I hope when the information is enough, our wildlife populations will still stand at handsome figures though. I hope this will not be when almost, if not every organism, including humans, when tested they will positively have carbofuran in their systems (A sad case for Alaska where pollutants are just in almost every living thing which is what I have stumbled on, thinking that I would read something far from toxic chemicals).
The wild supply and haphazard distribution of the pesticide Carbofuran will therefore continue facilitating poisoning of wildlife, birds, fish and who knows even of human poisoning whose facts lie locked in the confines of lack of data and documentation. Such is the desperate need of heed at which we stand.
After ‘a break’ from head aching matters of carbofuran, today I ventured into the current affairs of the fate of our planet and read of the goings on in the U.S.
Based on a conference held in July 17-20 the15th Protecting Mother Earth conference - organized by Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) where there were more than 600 attendants, mostly from indigenous nations of the United States and Canada, but also from as far as Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, and Europe Came together. Generally, they talked of global problems, challenges and solutions. They discussed energy and climate change as it affects indigenous peoples. Stories were told of health damage and ecological destruction brought about by oil refineries, coal power plants, gold mining, and nuclear military activity.
I think the whole issue of energy and climate change just infers global warming. Indeed this is documented of the conference of Minnesota’s new proposed 1600-mile oil pipeline extension which opponents say would contribute significantly to global warming for the way oil is extracted from the tar sands, which is extremely energy intensive. Tar sand oil extraction requires stripping all the trees and vegetation, scooping up and steaming the sands. Potential oil spills on Minnesota’s wetlands is also a concern. IEN states that very few of these projects are assessed for their social and cultural costs or their cumulative environmental and health impacts, which would cause fragmentation of the boreal forest, disruption to indigenous cultural life-ways and production of greenhouse gases.
Here we go again, global warming directly linked to a toxin-highly acknowledged energetic fluid-oil- which will intoxicate wildlife, fish, birds and humans during its extraction, distribution and use for man’s energy requirements.
Shawna Larson, Ahtna Athabascan and Supiaq, Aleut/Eskimo from Alaska, working with the Alaska Community Action on Toxics said that heavy metals and highly toxic persistent organic pollutants, such as DDT, PCBs, and dioxins, some already banned and rarely used in the Arctic are found in very high levels in native people and wildlife in Alaska. These pollutants used somewhere else are transported by wind, water currents and migratory species and concentrate in large quantities in the Artic. Alaskan indigenous people according to their cultural traditions feed on local fish and wildlife, which are considered to be the most contaminated in the world.
At this point, I think we should refresh our minds on the contaminants of Alaska.
For the whole story, read Talking about the future of Mother Earth.
Tags: Alaska, Canada, carbofuran, DDT, EPA, global warming, Indigenous Environmental Network, Kenya, PCB, Protecting Mother Earth, Richard Leakey, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, United States, Widlife Direct
Carbofuran Weekend Quiz
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 11 2008 | By: Martin
Hi. I am trying to pick out every possible poisoning area in Kenya without spending a lot of time figuring out which of the many are likely. Going to each is obviously absurd. There is great urgency to quickly expose and get to work-create awareness and monitor on all areas where wildlife poisoning is going on. I am therefore devising a formula to help Wildlife Defect’s Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force save on time and get quickly to a likely poisoning site. Based on this criterion, I will come up with a map showing exhaustively all the possible local wildlife poisoning hotspots.
For the past few months (hardly 1 year) I have been out begging people to tell me if they are poisoning (biased to carbofuran) animals in their areas. A tough thing for any human being to do; confessing to a wrong doing. It makes this job ridiculous for those of us in it. Nonetheless, some results have been forthcoming. In the process, I have been able to establish some relationships in factors which upon interacting, then most likely there is wildlife poisoning in the area. The sites where I visited are Kisii, Nairobi, Machakos, Naivasha, Kajiado, Isiolo, Maralal and Busia. In all these sites, poisoning was reported, though of various degrees. These were factors pointing to poisoning in an area:
1. Farming activities (F) – Preferably this should be mixed farming. This was the case in all the sites.
2. Focus of carbofuran use (FC)-Usually an area of large scale commercial crop farming will lead to a centralized grande supply of the pesticide chemical. This was observed in Naivasha and Busia; commercial flower farming and commercial rice growing respectively.
3. Conflict or ‘Misplaced’ Crisis [fatal] (C) - Misplaced implies unusual in this case. Conflict is almost entirely only human-wildlife conflict. Crisis may be hunger (resulting from persistent crop failure due to poor farming methods or failure of rainfall). Vermin infestation may also be classified as crisis with reported victims being domestic carnivores turned rogue (in Kisii where a dog had rabies and Kajiado where a veterinarian poisoned rabied dogs), rodents (‘rat kill’ around Nairobi-in Kikuyu-and controlling squirrel’s in planting fields in Machakos) and unusual vermin such as cases of dogs breaking and feeding on soft maize crop; Warthogs feeding on crops and making burrows in planted fields. I do not include insect pests as misplaced crisis because this is the ONLY case that accords proper use of the chemical.
4. Remoteness (R)-If a site is away from a major carbofuran distributing town or focus of carbofuran use (FC), it is very likely that the pesticide is little known e.g. in Isiolo and Maralal.
The formular is therefore:
F+FC+C-R = Poisoning in the area
Or simplified,
F+C=Poisoning in the area
FC+C =Poisoning in the area
The following quiz will just help me test the accurateness of my formulae above. Please attempt it: Each equation has an answer from one of these: poisoning, no poisoning or impossible.
NB: If a factor does not appear in the equation, it means the factor is not experienced.
F+R=
FC+R=
C+FC+F=
Tags: , carbofuran, poisoning, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force, Wildlife Direct
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