Farmers Poisoning Carcasses Wipe Out 60% Of Vultures In Kenya's Masasi Mara Park - BBC

[hatrack]

Vulture populations in one of Africa's most important wildlife reserves have declined by 60%, say scientists. The researchers suggest that the decline of vultures in Kenya's Masai Mara is being driven by poisoning.

The US-based Peregrine Fund says farmers occasionally lace the bodies of dead cattle or goats with a toxic pesticide called furadan. This appears to be aimed at carnivores that kill the livestock, but one carcass can poison up to 150 vultures.

Munir Virani, who is director of the Peregrine Fund's Africa programmes, has called for use of furadan to be banned in the region "to preserve these keystone members of the scavenging community". "People may think of vultures as ugly and disgusting, but the birds are essential for the ecosystem," he says.

Their taste for carrion actually makes them the landscape's clean-up team - ensuring the region is not littered with bodies, helping contain the spread of disease and recycling nutrients.

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9290000/9290103.stm

[Boudica the Lyoness]

1. What a foolish thing to do

When will we ever learn?

[glinda]

2. Humans are a blight upon the planet. Most of them anyways.

[AlecBGreen]

3. IIRC this was/is a big problem in India as well

:( ignorance is deadly

[Alameda]

4. rather...a little bit of knowledge...is deadly.

A typical problem with most of the humans is that they seem to know enough to really cause trouble. They don't extrapolate their "solutions" to their inevitable and undesirable results.

[Odin2005]

5. The majority of people have trouble extrapolating the big picture from their daily lives.

You can see this in people's political views compared with their actual behavior and attitudes. I know a lot of people that are very kind, compassionate, empathetic, and charitable, and have very reasonable positions on local issues, and yet support awful RW policies. It's the exact same problem, they can't connect the local with the Big Picture.