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
Wildlife Reserves and Parks safe from wildlife poisoning
Category: Pesticides, carbofuran | Date: Sep 10 2008 | By: Martin
Hi,
Since the month of June, some rains have been pattering the Kenyan soil, while wild herbivores have been doing well (even the wildebeest migration brought carnivore food to Kenya) and pastoralists are apparently not having any quarrels with carnivores (One of the significant human-wildlife conflict reasons). But even before then, since April 2008, Wildlife Direct has made a lot of noise to the public, raising attention on the wildlife poisoning that had assumed an uncontrollably wild trend. Still, some awareness has been raised with a couple of farmers showing some interest in knowing the monster behind the pesticides that they so preciously spend o for the best crop yields.I believe the two forces-noise making and favourable weather conditions- have merged to bring a seize fire on the wildlife poisoning. Unfortunately though, some renown wildlife poisoning areas are still reported with the harmful trend going on. I have summarized the information since the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign by Wildlife Direct began in april, 2008 until now in maps showing the top-rated/reported poiosning areas, some of the affected wildlife in these areas and the current poisoning status in the areas in Kenya-current-wildlife-poisoning-status-in-kenya.pdf
Please keep reading our blog.
Tags: Carnivores, human-wildlife conflict, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign, Wildlife Direct, wildlife poisoning
Inland biodiversity threat
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.
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
Bunyala Rice Scheme
Category: Pesticides, carbofuran | Date: Sep 07 2008 | By: Martin
Hi,
Bunyala Rice Scheme is in Busia District, Western Province in Kenya. It is actually located at the border to Siaya District which extends southerly and easterly of Busia district.
Hardship area
The area is a flat expanse with characteristic scrubland and savannah conditions. This vegetation is scanty and poor short grasslands around homesteads whereas the grazing fields are a mixture of tufted grasslands with thick bushes and scrub whereas there is reed vegetation where water floods during the rains mostly resulting from the River Nzoia (a major river that drains into Lake Victoria) bursting its banks rather than from the rains flooding the plains.
A photo showing some of the vegetation typical of Bunyala plains. The tufted grass is typical of its grazing fields(also note the almost bare area used in baiting birds using furadan)
Significance of the rice scheme
These conditions clearly define the area as one with low agricultural productivity. Livestock keeping is still the dominant human activity though the growing human population has shrunk the grazing fields thereby reducing livestock herds significantly. It is however not uncommon to find herds of over 50 heads owned by a family and these herds mix at the communal grazing field into super herds of indigenous animals. Even with such many animals, dairy production is low and milk is for domestic consumption and local sell. It is not wrong to state that these animals are mostly kept for prestige rather than livelihood sustainability.
A boy herding livestock (some of the sheep he is looking after in the mixed herd cut out at the top of photo).
Poaching, also an old practice carried down the generations still goes on in the area though the hunting grounds are now confined to the hills such as Wanga hill where wild game, especially antelopes have retreated following habitat destruction and terrorism by man’s aggression to them for meat mostly to trade in. Laughing hyenas in the distance in the night is a usual thing and claims of leopard visits in the dead of the night is an occasional but known possibility in the area. The fabled ogre in the traditional folklore according to my grandfather may have been the lion. The mighty strength, hairy body with tail, unpleasant odour (typical of beasts) and tendency to strike in the night (may be just as the man-eaters of Tsavo or an old lion with a high affinity for easy to catch human prey. This may have accorded this beast the description that it attacked in the night when in reality the younger, robust individuals may have been hunting normally in the wild) all befit the King of the jungle, the Lion. But now there is no more of the ogre/ (might be) lion.
The wife to the lion; lioness.
Crop farming (maize, millet and sorghum alongside a number of tubers), a revolutionarily acquired practice like in many livestock keeping communities also goes on at painfully minimal levels of zeal, the result of which the harvest is almost always zero. This is aggravated by the irregular and low levels of rainfall in the area, needless to mention the flooding calamity which always strikes and chokes the crops dead while in the field.
The Bunyala Rice Scheme established in the 1960’s in the area therefore brought some relief to the situation. Paddy did just well and everyone in the above activities was soon doubling up as a paddy tender, earning some daily income besides a portion of the rice crop in their holdings to supplement their starch requirements at home.
A section of Bunyala Rice Scheme
Furadan induction
In the early 1980’s Furadan made a debut in Kenya and Bunyala Rice Scheme like many other local rice schemes benefited from this awesome reliable nematicide pesticide. Birds were flocking the rice scheme to gorge on the grain and organisms that thrive in water when the floodgates are opened to supply water to the rice scheme. Grain-eating and wetland birds therefore flocked in such large numbers as any native had ever experience. Man’s desire for bird protein given the dwindling wild herbivore population shifted to the grain-eaters and wetland birds. Catapults by youngsters and herdsmen became common (These are no more since Furadan took over). Hunters quickly snatched the opportunity and shifted their focus to birds from wild game. With a wild instinct on boosting catch bounty they discovered Furadan as an effective bird-killing substance. Man’s bird meat consumption therefore rocketed and has been a normalcy to date.
Significance of Furadan to wild animals and birds
Birds are poisoned in such horrific numbers. Domestic and wild animals including snakes are known to have died from feeding intoxicated birds. Biologically, man is also an animal and from his wild, primitive, feeding behaviour, I must painfully say a wild one. He gets a dose of his intoxication by feeding on the poisoned birds. What may also become disastrous is the status of raptors in the area. Raptors target the smaller birds’ flocks which increases their chances of getting food while conserving their energy for hunting periods during the times when the fields are harvested, but the situation is more worrying even then. Smaller birds flock in smaller numbers and while poisoning progresses on, it means a large proportion of birds in these smaller flocks gets to eat the poison-laced food. In my survey in the area 3 months ago, I saw 7 species of raptors in 5 days, 3 of which are Accipiters, otherwise ‘shortwings’ in the temperate countries and which feed mostly on the smaller grain-eaters. Naturally, the easier, sluggish bird will be caught and predated upon by a bird of prey. These weaker, less sleek subjects to escape are poisoned individuals. Since the raptors go for the soft tissues first, the entrails of their quarry are the first to be eaten, exposing the raptors to high possibility of getting poisoned by eating Furadan contaminated entrails from the just ingested Furadan-laced food. Not so far from Bunyala area is the Lake Victoria where a number of cases have been reported of Furadan poisoning on fish which again the Banyala (People of Bunyala) and their Luo neighbours eat lavishly.
As site of our interest for education and awareness in the Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign at Wildlife Direct, such is the status quo in and around Bunyala Rice Scheme.
Tags: Antelope.Furadan, Birds, Bunyala Rice Scheme, Kenya, Lake Victoria, Lion, raptors, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign, 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
Pesticide regulation mechanisms in Kenya
Category: Pesticides | Date: Sep 03 2008 | By: Martin
While we struggle at Wildlife Direct to confront the regulation on hazardous pesticides such as furadan, the regulators have always been sleek to remind us that even furadan is rightly regulated and legitimate. That may be so, but the harsh reality is that in some circumstances, the effectiveness of the regulatory mechanisms stands to be questioned. Read an independent perspective in the Africa News Service story, Kenya lacks pesticides regulatory mechanisms.
Tags: Africa News Service, Kenya, Pesticides, Wildlife Direct
Urbanization of birds
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 28 2008 | By: Martin
At Wildlife Direct in Nairobi, I sit at a place that overlooks a modern neighbourhood and I have a bird’s eye view of birds soaring/flying above the houses: swifts, pigeons and raptors dominate the show.
At Wildlife Direct offices, located on the srventh floor in Nairobi,I sit at a location where I overlook a modern housing system. I have a great bird’s eye view of things and can bear witness to the diverse birds that I see soaring/hunting over the quarters inhabited by humans. Swifts, Black Kitesand Pigeons dominate the show.
I live in a neighbourhood where nothing is short of modern living: beautiful houses with at least a car packed outside every house. On weekends when I am staying within the confines of my small compound, I only need to sit at the doorstep and I will see a Black Kite perched on an electricity pole, eating the remains of a piece of fried chicken that was left by a well-fed child, disposed in the bin in the backyard but somehow the Kite, given its sharp eye sight got it. Augur Buzzards also emit their repeated nasal “nhwaa!nhwaa!…” as they hunt around away from their otherwise normal hunting grounds-open fields with mole excavations. These guys are mole hunters. Well, there is a small open field closeby, so this partly justifies their presence but occasionally they swoop downwards and pick up something;definately food remnant. A walk around the perimeter wall,what I wouold describe as the estate’s backyard, Marabou Storks, Sacred Ibises and Cattle Egrets almost always post sentry at about any one given time along a polluted stream at a dump-site(now cleared but the posting sentry culture still continues).
The main highway through Nairobi otherwise Mombsa road heading eastward has become a breeding site for ciconiformes-the family of storks, herons and egrets. Heronries (mixed congregations of the ciconiformes) occur on most Acacia trees, clustering at the different separated tree groves that border the highway.
The whole point here is not how Kenyan birds have become urbanized but that they have dived into the stresses of the city especially into the stresses of pollution-noise, smoke, food from refuse dumps, whereas water in some cases is sewage water. To a greater part therefore, these stresses are of intoxication form.
Statistics show an increase in respiratory illnesses in humans in most cities around the world and Nairobi is not an exception, majorly because of the intoxicants from vehicle and industrial carbon gases. Talking of exhaust and industrial fumes, the birds in the city ‘look dirty’ in particular the smaller birds and in particular the House Sparrow that ventures close into proximities of the fumes-emitting vehicles and industrial premises, even nesting on some of these buildings. To a keen observer, the white-coloured egrets on Mombasa road are only naturally,clean looking and white as their counterparts out of town when they moult then the clean moult is subjected to the smoke and dust and quickly becomes brown or even blackish. I can only wonder how the inside of their bodies is? what of their lungs? and what of their livers that have to struggle detoxicating their blood? I know there is serious intoxication going on in these creatures despite their quest for the town-bound movement being satiated.
Tags: Black Kite, carbon gases, Egrets, Herons, House Sparrows, Intoxication, Nairobi, Sacred Ibises, Storks, Swifts, Wildlife Direct
Poisoning News: Quite good and….still bad
Category: Masai Mara, Uncategorized, carbofuran, lions | Date: Aug 06 2008 | By: Martin
MWEA, SAMBURU, KANO PLAINS, MARA FINDINGS
Hi all. I have been back in the office for 3 days having just toured some of the areas where there has been documentation of carbofuran poisoning. All seems well at the gaze with the full spectacle of the wild animals and birds feeding, playing and even in the act that will culminate in breeding. But is all really well? Indeed it is good news of no poisoning for some places and still bad news of poisoning for others. Nonetheless, for the good news I managed a smile on the last day or is it night of the trip.
Yesterday I received a call alert (‘flash’) from an unfamiliar number. I flashed back but no return flash to signify any urgency. I ignored the number but while I scrolled through my call log to make another call this morning, I stumbled on the number that I was flashed with yesterday. It then struck my mind that I had noted down some numbers during the field trip. I checked my field note book and there I stumbled on it! It belonged to a certain guy in Mwea who I had approached and faked that I needed bird meat. We had then fixed a meeting for early this month. We agreed that he would alert me when he was ready and that he would link me with a bird meat vendor who poisoned the birds. You would not suspect that such a deal can take place in such a place especially given that everybody else seemed busy planting rice.
In the neighbourhood of Kisumu town, in Kano plains, some kilometres past the site that was Ahero Rice Scheme, there is an out grower scheme where locals are growing rice on individual rice plots. During a short stop over, I observed a lot of birds flocked in the place and a couple of farmers were out working in their plots. I talked to one old woman to know if the birds were not a problem at harvest time. She said they were indeed but her grandchildren would chase them away by wails and beating of metal cans. I then asked her if she thought killing of some of the birds would be a solution but she said she did not think it was necessary adding that in any case, birds were being poisoned for meat. I then confirmed that after all, there is poisoning in the area. For a while there was on-going bird poisoning in Ahero Rice Scheme but with the stalling of the operations of the rice scheme, bird congregations have reduced and Furadan supply for use in the irrigation scheme also cut, bringing a cessation in the poisoning frenzy.
Samburu NR seemed all tranquil, with the expected heat dominating the local climatic conditions and emphasizing ‘this is Samburu’. For three days I roamed the reserve with my friend and spotted many carnivores and scavengers. We got to see six lionesses in total but were disturbed that we had spotted no lions absolutely during the three whole-day drives around the national reserve. In fear that poisoning might have taken the lives of quite many of these I ended up talking to an expert in the area who advised me to relax and that the kings of the jungle were around, not always in company of their ‘wives’ and there were strategic localities where these could be found. I was glad the place was safe for the time despite earlier recorded incidences of carnivore poisoning in the area, though she added that she was in the process of getting to find out more about poisoning in the area.
Masai Mara also turned out looking good. I even passed by the Mara Conservancy incognito. The area has had the most recently documented cases of poisoning-this year, 2008. With hippos and lions as the reported victims, both seemed to do just fine. It was captivating witnessing lion/lionesses feasting, playing and in the act of breeding in one encounter.
The lioness below took advantage and got “the lion’s share!”
while the lion paid attention to his queen in an imminently heated up act that would bring forth another generation!
The vultures on the other hand looked good sprawled on the grass, not dead but waiting for thermals.
While others did not mind the flies after an unpoisoned meal.
Generally the presence of the Gnu on the first of their biannual migration to and from (Tanzania for this case) Kenya and Tanzania enhanced the bountifulness of wildlife in the Mara. Isn’t this beautiful?
Keep reading our Wildlife Direct’s blog for the latest in the wildlife poisoning scene.
Tags: Kano Plains, Masai Mara, Mwea Rice Scheme, poisoning, Samburu National Reserve, Wildlife Direct
Digital Camera Donations to Wildlife Direct
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 18 2008 | By: Martin
Hi. Sorry for a replica post. This however is meant to clarify that we do not restrict our request for digital cameras to just monetary donations but actual cameras are equally accepted. we know that some people have old digital cameras that they don’t use any more that we could actually make good use of in the field.
The most basic of cameras is all we need.
It is also paramount that we safeguard and ensure your material donations reach us safely in order for us to be able to use them for the application that we requested you to donate them for. In this case,please do not post any donations by the provided physical post (In my comment-Martin:WildifeDirect in need of digital cameras) since this is risky especially for costly items. It is actually possible for the material donations-camera donation(s) in this case -to be delivered to Washington DC then Paula can arrange for them to be delivered to our offices in Nairobi, Kenya.
If you can make an in-kind donation of an actual digital camera, Please email us on info@wildlifedirect.org if you want to send us one, and we’ll tell you where to send the cameras. We really appreciate your support.
Tags: Wildlife Direct
Wildlife Direct in need of digital cameras
Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 17 2008 | By: Martin
Hi. While our Stop Wildlife Poisoning Campaign is on-going, we like to appeal for your support towards purchasing 2 digital cameras to be used by the Stop Wildlife Poisoning team. A piece of this costs around $500 in Kenya. While the team is constituted of 14 members, not all have digital cameras especially by virtue of the team being constituted of some members who by virtue of their profession do not have this vital piece of equipment. Further, one of the members lost his digital camera when it fell off a cliff while on a survey related to the anti-poisoning campaign. We want to provide you with photos of our sighted poisoning incidences and other poisoning-related incidences, which will in addition add authenticity and boost the validity of our claims against poisoning and especially as concerns the ban on carbofuran. Kindly support us.
Tags: carbofuran, Stop Wildlife Poisoning Cammpaign, Wildlife Direct
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