Stop Wildlife Poisoning

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 13 2008 | By: Martin

Biodiversity is faltering the world over as BBC reveals that current trends imply that world governments will fail to meet their agreed targets of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010.

Habitat loss, hunting,pollution and the grande global warming phenomenon have all come down heavily to crush biodiversity to the edge of the limit of survival. These forces are more or less operating in a worldwide scale and should only in a most fair and responsible way be handled by all the states of the world.

But poisoning seems to have a special place especially as far as wiping out birds species is concerned. As I read  National Geographic Channel’s article, Birds in “Big Trouble”Due to Drugs, Fishing,more, I could not stop feeling that poisons must be a nightmare threat capable of wiping out whole species in short time with very minimal room for the reversal of the situation. The article reiterated the catastrophic decimation of the white-rumped asian vultures due to Diclofenac poisoning by up to 99.9% of their original since 1990’s. The whole story can be read in the article Many Asian Vultures Close to Extinction.

Poisoning, which may result from pollution is operating in many regions in the world in remote locations in a most quiet way. I am however concerned by the poisoning of birds particularly in Kenya. While many tend to overlook the killing of birds because they are many, then I must say we are wrong because the kiling is mostly indiscriminate cutting across the flock species as well as the small numbered non-congregating species.

In a walk across the neighbourhood of Bunyala Rice Scheme a while ago,a young man was so determineed to show me a beautiful species that always perched on the cows like Ox-peckers but to his disappointment he could not sight it. I spotted a handful Wattled Starlings on a nearby tree in non-breeding plumage but he vehemently refused that those were not the birds. We went on to ask an elderly man grazing his cattle if he knew and had seen the birds and to his shocking surprise he confided that in a split of time it appeared the birds had vanished. We came to a poisoning site and stumbled on the carcass of a mature male wattled starling in breeding plumage concealed in a grass tuft. This was a poisoning site. From a distance I could see children and young men walking into homes with small hand-washing basins.I could not see any pool wher they may have been washing or drawing water, but why not use buckets to carry the water back to their homes? The young man I was with told me that actually the basins contained the purchased spoils of furadan poisoning which were none other than birds. He said the basins used would actually be much bigger during the peak hunting season during rice planting because the numbers poisoned would also be bigger. It then struck my mind that one conservationist and scout in Mwea Rice Scheme reported that in the 1990’s, poisoned birds quantifiable in pick ups were being ferried away from the rice scheme to unknown markets. What is common to these two sites (Bunyala and Mwea) is that in both cases, it has been reported that Tree Ducks, otherwise Whistling Ducks are almost not to be observed and most probably is because they have suffered heavy mortalities from poisoning.

This was not all. I witnessed one cyclist carrying abour 10 storks in a sack tied on his bicycle rear with  their large bills protruding beyond the sack, which gave them away. We are not just talking of poisoning of a few birds but what I would refer to as birds concentrated in habitats with food abundance thereby drawing as many of their kind as possible, yet the poisoners also give it the best of their poisoning techniques and poisons to catch the most of them-basins, sacks and pick ups of poisoned birds.

As we walked back from the poisoning site, I could not help feeling that the grsslands were more deserted by grassland birds than they should be, given the thickness of the grass density I observed. Deserted or poisoned? Likely, the latter is the justification.

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Tags: BBC, biodiversity, Birds, Bunyala Rice Scheme, diclofenac, drug, ducks, Mwea Rice Scheme, National Geographic Channel, poisoniing, Wattled Starling, white-rumped vultures

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Category: carbofuran | Date: Aug 14 2008 | By: Martin

Hi,

“In these woods, I am the master!”

Hunting or is it poaching which may involve weapons or poisoning is by far a mastery of skill rather than a crude means of survival as is mostly perceived.

I have had a couple chances during which I have talked to a poacher/hunter/poisoner by mingling in a way to suggest I am interested in apprenticeship in the same. In the end I have been amazed at how much they know about wildlife, weapons and poisons than many of us. This includes:

1. They know that poisons are lethal: Unlike what we know, the people who poison wildlife for food in significant cases don’t eat poisoned game themselves. They sell it and in many cases will buy meat or chicken for consumption. They will select the wildfowl that is not dead and slaughter it for consumption at their homes. Wild birds that remain alive are the least intoxicated and only end up being taken away because their appendages are broken to prevent them from flying during the state when they are disoriented by the poison. By the time they regain stability their ability to escape is impaired by their crippled state.

2. Poachers know where and how to get their quarry: Bird hunters know the ideal habitats to get which birds. They are the wild ornithologists who do not need a sophisticated sound playback system to get the attention of secretive birds. The only Flufftail (a kind of bird) I ever seen was in western Kenya and I was able to see it with the aid of a hunter who mimicked the bird’s call. He disclosed that that is how he got to get the birds where he laid poisoned bait.

3. They know the difficult/impossible quarry: Bird poachers know that game birds are difficult to catch. One told me that for business i.e. if you want birds to sell, game birds, the likes of guineafowls, francolins and quails are difficult to poison despite their congregating behaviour being ideal for poisoning. Instead, they use nooses and these require the patient or small scale vendor. At a trapping site in Busia, Kenya, the egrets are ignored since these will least likely succumb to a small dose of carbofuran; this will not be so economical to the poacher who wants to use a little of the chemical to get a bountiful catch. Still, egrets due to seemingly requiring a higher dosage of the poison will fly away even while intoxicated hence most likely will benefit a poacher or customer at a further locality who has not done any investment on the chemical and the actual baiting process. Most poachers on the other hand describe ducks generally as ‘dim’ and these settle to eating poisoned bait ‘without a second thought’, to use one poacher’s words.

4. The poachers also know which species are dwindling in numbers: Again, through consistent monitoring by these crude scientists parallel to their unpermitted cropping of wild birds without orders from the wildlife managers shows they are up to date with the trends and have their own red data lists out there. These red listings however mean nothing to them and they will continue with their indiscriminate hunting/poisoning methods to push to extinction the species whose numbers in those localities are struggling against the hunting pressures. Two bird poachers disclosed that the last they ever saw vultures must have been in the eighties. Our bird guide-books still bear maps showing these areas to be areas that vultures range. Men in their late Twenty’s admit having seen such birds during their childhood. The generation in their teens know nothing that looks like a vulture in their lifetime. If it is hunting that has driven the scavengers from these areas or even pushed the local populations to extirpation nobody knows. But they know the ducks, and notably the White-faced Tree ducks and Wattled starlings are dwindling steadily in the area because of poisoning.

So here we are confronting experts in what they have perfected in. By the way they also know if you are enquiring about poisoning and animals in the area then you are from the Kenya Wildlife Service, the local organization that values animals more than humans and will arrest you. So they will avoid talking to you or run away or they will just be given asylum by their own who will say nothing to you!

“The cover is good. I had better stay under cover till that KWS spy gets nothing and leaves my area!”

We need their own to change their own. But this requires incentive to the reformed to keep an eye, educate and create confidence for dialogue with the conservationists. If you can, please contribute towards a fund for one such person I know we see if there is some impact.

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Tags: carbofuran, Egret, Flufftail, KWS, Poacher, poisoning, Vulture, Wattled Starling, White-faced Tree Duck

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Category: carbofuran | Date: Jul 10 2008 | By: Martin

Hi. I have reason to be scared of the Busia birds’ poisoning . I therefore continue posting the critical findings as I strongly believe if we go on to gather more concrete data from this area we can touch the Kenyan government’s soft spot to act on the chemical behind this unreasonable bird mortalities -carbofuran-and at the wrong time, the reasons for which you will see below.

Take a look at the following birds courtesy of Oisseux.net (first photo) and Minziro Daudi (second and third photos). Can you identify and sex them?

How about these ones?

Repetition eh?

I photographed these dead ones (except the fifth bird which survived after it was given plenty of water) in Busia, just a portion representative of the whole scenario. They are in breeding plumage. The Wattled Starling(picture 4) is a male individual in full breeding adornment-the showy, yellow forehead ‘bald’ extending to the face behind and under the eye. the fifth bird is a male Fan-tailed Widowbird in breeding plumage as well. The piled streaked individuals (picture 6) and the dark one are Fan-tailed Widowbirds- probably a male and his wives; a whole colony destroyed with no offspring to replace them. The message sent above is that “We are being killed when we are breeding. Who replaces us?” Bear in mind this species of birds in Kenya is only restricted to the region around Lk. Victoria and another distal range at the coast of Kenya, bordering the Indian Ocean. Inland, between these two water bodies, there are no Fan-tailed Widowbird populations.
In most birds, males acquire the most attractive regalia in breeding season due to hormonal changes to attract the females. I think man’s appetite for wild protein is most misplaced at this time in birds’ lives. This means nest failures or no breeding individuals which clearly spells declines in numbers wit curtailed breeding of the surviving numbers. One of the locals who claims having abandoned the business during the time when the irrigation scheme stalled its operations between 1998-2004 observed that these birds and many others are much less, admitting having observed their declines even while he was still baiting them.There is large-scale decline in birds’ numbers based on the hunters’ statistics who said daily catch per trapping field ranges from 20 to 200 birds in a day. Bird baiting is carried out in at least 4 sites on the average, daily. This translates to mortality values of 80 to 800 birds in one day. If this is in breeding season, then the breeding and nesting failures are disastrous to the birds’ populations.

Kindly support WD’s Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task force to get to the ground and gather more data and create awareness that will put an end to these birds’ killing.

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Tags: carbofuran, Fan-tailed Widowbird, hunters, poisoning, Wattled Starling, Wildlife Direct's Stop Wildlife Poisoning Task Force

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