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Email exchange about a veterinary drug that threatens vultures:
1) 24 May, 2006
“Vultures in Asia" India bans production of death drug [1].
Dear Safari Operator,
I know the experts say that this is not the problem here in Tanzania but what do vets use here e.g. on those 'pampered wazungu cattle' living near you in Olasiti?
(Olasisti is 'a village' very near Arusha.)
2) 24 May, 2006
As a local livestock breeder would you …
“Hi,
Care to respond to this? Don't think that Diclofenac is used widely in vet circles here, but if so, I know you're cows won't end up as vulture meat.
A Tanzanian Safari Operator
3) May 26, 2006
“Hi James,
I don't think that I have ever used Diclofenac in my cows and also believe it is not used much, if at all, in cows. You could best have this confirmed by a veterinarian. Nobody spends a lot of money on "fancy" drugs for cows. We pamper our cows in the way of that they don't have to walk most of the day to get to food or water but nobody that I know uses drugs, if not absolutely necessary. And, most of all, as you say certainly none of the cows end up as vulture food.”
An Arusha Livestock Breeder
4) March 19, 2007
Dear all,
Further to the three emails - from ten months ago - copied below for reference.
I do not want to cause unnecessary alarm; for I was wrong in suspecting that a tickicide was causing the massive dove mortality in West Kilimanjaro (and right across northern Tanzania's Maasailand) last August - this die-off was in fact caused by Newcastle Disease; but do feel obliged to immediately report the following observation.
This afternoon (March 19, 2007) I spent an hour and a half (1330 to 1500) watching a very sick White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus) that was perched over a stream (at about 25m) on a dead branch of an old Albizzia tree at 'Makumira springs'. The site is, one hopes only by coincidence, within one kilometre of the Artificial Insemination Centre for Cattle at Usha River, Arusha district in northern Tanzania. Incidentally this species, undoubtedly the commonest and most widespread vulture in Tanzania, would seem to me to have already become “pretty damned scarce” in East Africa (cf. with only 30 years ago) certainly so outside the major and contiguous National Parks cum game-preservation blocks.
During 90% of the time I spent with the vulture it exhibited the “classic” eyes-closed, neck-drooping between the thighs symptoms that became associated among South Asia's vulture populations with signs of advancing renal failure, as a result of Diclofenac poisoning by eating at carcasses of cattle that had been recently treated with this NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug).
My two urgent questions are:
In view of India's recent ban (May 2006) on the production and sale of Diclofenac, in an attempt to remove the drug from the food-chain there, is it just too cynical to wonder whether significantly more of this anti-inflammatory drug might be appearing on the market (no doubt at drop-dead prices) here in Africa than was the case hitherto?
If so, is Meloxicam, an alternative that has been proven safe for vultures, widely available yet, anywhere in Africa?
Yours hopefully, James
5) March 20, 2007
From our SPCIs (Special Correspondents In), out in the real fields, in both Kenya and Tanzania:
“In the unpleasant task, over many years, of working with sick raptors one sees quite a few hundred die.”
All, or nearly all, of the moribund birds will hang their heads, close their eyes and exhibit exactly the "Diclofenac head-drooping syndrome" described as being characteristic of victims in the Asian Gyps vulture crisis. See for example recent publicity from Bird Life International.
On March 19, when I was watching a sick vulture near Arusha, a colleague in rural Kenya was watching similar head-drooping by two pairs of White-backed Vultures Gyps africanus at their nests. This was during the hottest part of the day. We should all admit now that as the “head drooping scare” has become widely publicized we have been shocked by our own lack of observation skills prior to the syndrome being described.
It seems that in hot and perhaps especially in very humid conditions Gyps vultures head droop a lot of the time.
At a recent conservation conference in India delegates watched head drooping by vultures. Surely something to make one's ornithological heart flutter with anxious concern. Seasonally much of northern India becomes very hot indeed; far hotter than here in the highlands of East Africa.
So apparently it was a great relief for all the hand-wringing experts when the clouds spread across the sun, the temperature dropped, and all the vultures’ heads shot up!
Colleagues have over the past few decades observed hundreds of dying Gyps across East Africa.
In Kenya, in particular, it seems that a culture has emerged of poisoning any unwelcome scavenging animals; creatures which are perceived simply as vermin by the majority of every day city and country folk.
So they poison cow carcasses with Furadan.
Furadan is a “mite-icide” intended for use only on vegetables. However it is sold in chemists’ shops all across Maasailand, and throughout northern and Eastern Kenya, where the bulk of the cattle industry is located and where there is in reality no vegetable cultivation. It is sold, bought and used for the specific purpose of poisoning vertebrate wildlife. Employees of the Kenya Government’s Ministry of Livestock continue to hand-out this poison to cattle owners.
Anti-rabies patrols throw similarly poisoned bait from moving vehicles even onto the road verges.
Airport authorities poison Marabou Storks Leptoptilus crumeniferus and in some instances even small children have died via this dispensing route.
At many livestock centres any unwanted hyena, leopard, lion, feral or stray dog or even jackal is quickly dealt with by poisoning.
One suspects deliberate poisoning of vultures too.
It happens on a vast scale.
For example Jua Kali Triaticks made with Furadan killed five hundred cows at Kajiado in 2004. The carcasses were left out in the open. News stories showed pictures of vultures and stray dogs feasting on the piles of carcasses. A local chemist there said that subsequently many vultures died. However observant ornithologists living nearby did not notice any dying birds of prey. This reveals how easily and frequently we must overlook even such big incidents.
Following-up on one poisoned carcass it was discovered that at least 187 vultures and two pairs of Tawny Eagles had been killed. To date this has been the largest-known killing of vultures anywhere in the world.
On a Kenya game conservancy there was recently a vulture restaurant - where butchers routinely disposed of all manner of meat and offal. An English woman married to the conservancy manager could not abide the flies. At the wave of her hand the staff routinely sprayed or dusted Baygon insecticide onto the scattered meat. It was a full month before anyone began to notice the dead and dying vultures. That was on a conservancy being run by supposed conservationists.
Multiple such an incident by the many hundreds of times in which local farmers and herders put-out poisoned bait and one really does not have to look to Diclofenac as the cause of death; even that of any one bird. Indeed in Kenya the use of Furadan alone, chiefly by government officials, may already be more than enough to exterminate the Gyps vulture populations of the entire country.
The way that poisoned birds die appears fairly similar.
As they begin to sicken their temperature regulation goes awry - so they get too hot and then too cold. Their heads droop, perhaps occasionally to rise again, and frequently their eyes close.
Vultures are rather resilient beings so they hang on to life for a while. But one experienced observer in Kenya has seen Furadan kill a Lappet-faced Vulture Torgos tracheliotus in only nine minutes after it had eaten at a poisoned hyena carcass.
It has been noticed that Furadan and Quealatox causes dying birds of prey and vultures to seek shade. They tend to hide, or even burrow their way into bushes or grass clumps prior to death.
The effects of the Desert Locust Schistocerca gregaria poisoning programme alone are enough to have seriously damaged the viability of not only African but also Eurasian raptor populations. The scientists, and well-meaning lay persons, in far-away rich-world locations hardly seem to have questioned the wisdom of poisoning decisions, first taken over sixty years ago, to habitually spray poison from the air onto swarms of African desert locusts. These grasshoppers periodically experience great population surges, and move-off in a great cloud, downwind with the rainfall. Nor do they seem to have questioned aerial poisoning of that cereal-raiding “locust-bird” the Red-billed Quelea Quelea quelea together with many other “innocent” seed-eating bird species caught within the target area; together with Red-winged Onychognathus morio and Wattled Starlings Creatophora cinerea both of which have been observed poisoned en masse. And then there is the attempted elimination of the moth whose larva has become known as the Army Worm Spodoptera exempta . Again huge amounts of poison are sprayed onto the food supply, in the flight path of the flocks of migrating storks and raptors, birds who are there for the specific purpose of devouring the caterpillar army. The timing is usually near perfect. In 1982 Queala poisoning alone was held responsible for the extirpation of the Mount Kenya Lammergeier Gypaetus barabatus population.
It is said by ornithologists in Tanzania that in general people here do not poison wildlife. Therefore the situation is much better than it is in our neighbour Kenya. However as we have seen much wildlife-loss can be so easily overlooked. There is no question that Tanzania is in some ways much better informed, bird-wise, than is Kenya. There seem to be a larger number of people out there contributing information and keeping their eyes peeled. Perhaps it is not the lack of observer eyes therefore, and maybe things are much better.
Yet in truth one can only assume that if “it is so much better here” then that is largely due to the lands of Tanzania having only fairly recently emerged from the undoubted general benefit to wildlife and ecological health of what one might call “state retardation of the economy”. Most ecologically-ignorant free-market fundamentalists have to date recognized only negative aspects in such “economic mismanagement”.
But more importantly Tanzania’s land today supports only half the human population of Kenya, so that Tanzania has yet to reach that point of no return...which many would say Kenya passed over twenty years ago.
If one wished to find a specific group of villains to blame for this state of affairs then there is no question that it would be the “new cattle barons”, whatever race, tribe or creed they may have once belonged to.
For the gargantuan and very aggressively managed cattle industry, poisoning of any wild competition is the obvious choice.
Experts in Kenya suggest that there the Maasai herding communities have demonstrated that they alone are capable of extirpating Kenya’s vultures. Their cattle are shared all along and right across the long border with Tanzania; spreading deep into “Tanzanian Maasailand”, regardless of any laws. One should not doubt that such poisoning practices, as now being undertaken by the Maasai community in Kenya, are not being employed just because their cattle are over the border in what is in theory Tanzanian territory.
It is argued that the Kenyan Maasai’s much applauded cultural tolerance of wildlife is in truth only a rather dilute concept; existing in a nation where a vast and ruthless cattle industry penetrates every park and reserve, ignores private property rights, and has over vast areas grazed the grass down to bare soil. There are people in rural communities trying to address and change this culture of poisoning, and they too have been shocked to discover how deeply ingrained it has become. Even though it is against the law the Kenya Wildlife Service itself continues to dispense poisons.
In conclusion my colleagues in Kenya assert that Diclofenac is not only less toxic than Furadan, it is also less persistent, and immeasurably less likely to be widely used in Africa where the individual well-being of an ailing cow is of very little importance.
Rather it is something to watch out for, just in case the use and sale ban now being enforced in India causes it to be off-loaded here in East Africa.
“But the sales pitch is going to have to be huge, to turn around such cavalier attitudes as those detailed above. There is some confidence in Kenya, despite all of the above, that should one see Diclofenac enter the veterinary market, there would be the will and strength to have it banned. However politics and name-smearing would probably be the route, not an appeal to supposed common sense.”
Poisoning is certainly part of Kenya’s national psyche. Unseen, overlooked or hushed-up, it has become the poor man’s weapon of choice.
The poor are of course, for one reason or another, outside the law. And of course they are ecologically the vast and overwhelming force upon the land.
by an “Observer” and James Birdman et al.
6) March 21, 2007
“Tanzanian bird experts were quite upset recently about the “conservation situation” in Kenya and yet remained adamant that Tanzania was very much better. But it is likely that they are holding on to an old picture, and in the time it takes to fill out all the squares data and get a handle on things, a lot may have changed for the worse. I remember Tanzania as a child, as a teenager and briefly visited the Gol Mountains recently, we were shocked at the vast difference. Cattle everywhere, hassling crowds of people around every corner. It is in many ways like Kenya was about ten years ago.
The People to kilometre ratio is similar to Kenya back then. But that is precisely the time when the scales were tipped, and all went crashing down. Tanzania may be in mid crash.
Panic doesn't help of course.
Mackworth-Praed and Grant noted a die off of Gyps vultures prior to the Second World War. Chum van Someren told us once that it was a British Government mass-poisoning of hyena on the Kinangop that finished-off the Hell's Gate Vultures.
Lewis and Pomeroy state "thousands" for Hell's Gate...but we never knew the area to have more than 150 birds at most, and never more than 30 nests (since the mid 1970s) This plus some off-the-wall observations of behaviour made on vultures in Tanzania in 1970s reveals a pretty poor idea of their true status or of their behaviour. But when it comes to poisoning a paper written by Newton and others reckons that one poisoned carcass for every 200 "good" carcasses is enough to cause the same catastrophic decline as seen in India.
It is believed by that at any one time in Kenya's major livestock-rearing areas, on the communal (i.e. as opposed to on the private ranches...where the situation is not so rosy either), there is enough poison being dished-out to easily cause such a serious decline.
That we have seen vast drops in numbers is undeniable e.g. in the Tsavo NPs – ‘us oldies’ can recall the thousands of Gyps vultures in the mid 1970s (e.g. eating from all of those dead elephant) ...now there is a handful of Gyps at best.
The decline in even the most optimal area is evident and the cause need only be toxins, out there in the wider environment, i.e. ENVIRONMENTAL POISONS.
As regards anyone mentioning any particular livestock-rearing ethnic community as being more responsible for any of this, one would expect the loudest critics will always be the western romantics.
We have had to only break the ice at talks to Maasai and Samburu communities, by showing multiple pictures of dead vultures and poisoned hyena etc., for everyone to abandon their cautious reserve and fully acknowledge that this is part of daily life. yes they do not want outsiders to know but, once it is proven, the barrier comes down.
An Observer and Birdman”
7) March 22, 2007
“On March 22 a typical full-day circuit of the Angyata Osugat plain was undertaken – A.O. is the almost treeless area spreading fifteen kilometres immediately east from the Nairobi road just north of Mount Meru. This time I went with Marion East and Heribert Hofer – specialists from Berlin with the Serengeti Hyena Research Group. For the past eighteen months I have traveled this route frequently; partly because it is the home of the Critically Endangered Maasai Spike-heeled Lark aka Beesley's Lark, aka Pygmy Spike-heeled Lark; frequently is at least three times per month.
In view of recent elevated concerns here in Tanzania regarding inadvertent raptor poisoning I was on a special look-out yesterday for vultures and any of the larger raptors, in truth for ANY and ALL of those very special BIG birds that so enliven/ed the African skies of my not-so secret life. On what was evidently a very good day on which to soar and glide I have to tell you that the only BOPs we saw "in the line of transect" were either insectivores ca 45 Lesser Kestrels – these days a good March movement, three reptile-hunters i.e. Black-chested Snake-Eagles - thankfully these birds were displaying, one accipiter in the form of an adult Gabar Goshawk, one insect and/or bird-eater being one European Hobby with a hapless passerine, and three small mammal eaters in the exquisite form of a pair of Eastern Chanting Goshawks with a mouse; and one rufescens Kestrel (the East African resident biological unit that was, in older thought, only a form, race or subspecies of Common Kestrel Falco tinnunculus), also a rather tardy rufous-umber Steppe Buzzard. And pride of place to at least nineteen eastward-treking Montagu's Harriers. No less than 16 were gorgeous male harriers – a posthumous historical acknowledgement is probably due to the territorial successes of the mighty Red Army in '42 - '45 (at least indirectly) for the continued existence in 2007 A.D. of any or all of these trans-Saharan 'comrades'.
We saw no Vultures of any species, no Aquila Eagles, not even the "resident" pair of Tawny Eagles, and not a single Bateleur. Last year we used to manage one – sometimes even two in a full day! I have taken old Africa hands along this route of late. All comment on the lack of certain big birds, especially the paucity of large raptors. Outside the Great Parks and Hunting Blocks we know, in our heart of hearts, that they are going down and that they are going down fast.”
8) March 24, 2007
The area we speak of was pretty trashed, and was so even twenty years ago. You'd be interested to know that the little gravel quarry that still holds a pair of Lanners (God Willing) on the east side of the road before Mount Longido is where I first got a Lanner. John Williams in 1966 rescued a chick that was being tossed around by some local kids and … long story, I was another kid that had a part to do in raising it.
Out on the flat dry Athi Plains there are thunder clouds around, and as yet no real passage. About 40 Less Kestrels today, yesterday 7 Euro Hobbys, and harriers always seem to be male and 70% are Pallid. But harriers had a poor year and I never see them in large groups any more (used to have a roost of at least twenty in one place).
Steppe Eagles are conspicuous by their near complete absence this year. Usually we have six or more that used to over-winter, in one small grove, but have not for seven years at least.
I recall seeing thousands in about 1981 or so, in one huge flight. No kidding. Over Lewa Downs...not that a location really has anything to do with passage.
For example we have seen at least 150 Amurs and Lesser Kestrels over the Sarit Centre in Nairobi city. It means nothing to note the location of such passage migrants. But BirdLife et al. rush to make the point and leap to the conclusion the area is an IBA. Consequently we have some very funny IBAs!
Migrants do seem down. I used to pick up a few Sakers and F.p. calidus each year. But not for some 15 years. Steppe Eagle were very common ditto. Steppe Buzzards seem to have a tight passage and zoom off en masse unnoticed. But I used to see many overwinter in exotic plantations...not any more.
I see at least 150 Gyps each day here. But that means little. I have no idea if they are resident or passing through. It just indicates that we have a lot of game.
If we adhere to the IUCN criteria and noted declines in 10 years (or in one of the bird subject’s lifetimes) in excess of that needed to ‘upgrade their status’, then we'd have all of Africa's raptors on the list, plus all the migrants.
Shame we have to sit by and listen to so much ill-informed mumbo-jumbo from the bureaucrats...not that we can ‘sit-by’ really, as all or most of what they say is aired in the rarified atmosphere of international conferences often at fancy hotels.
We are nervous of them jumping out of bed one day and claiming all African raptors endangered...because the sequence that has been put in place then spells the death knell for them all.
They would declare hands off...the last logical thought. They would disregard the real causes and focused on minor issues, like Hollywood movies on "poaching".
An Bird Observer in Kenya
9) 16 April 2007
Hello Colleagues,
Diclofenac is now on sale in Arusha, here in Tanzania in Africa, for the purpose of veterinary use on domestic ungulates.
Visits to two vets in Arusha on Saturday morning April 14, 2007 found that Diclofenac, the NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) responsible for the rapid and catastrophic collapse of Gyps vulture populations throughout South Asia during the past decade, is for sale for use on cattle and horses, and not just on pet dogs and cats as was apparently the case hitherto. At one vet’s shop (primarily a supplier to ‘the less-affluent community’) only flyers i.e. advertising material, (and very recently-arrived flyers at that), from the manufacturers (OUROFINO www.ourofino.com in Brazil) were available. At the other vet’s shop (a supplier to the ‘more affluent community’) Ourofino’s Diclofenac 50 was already up on the shelves. The packaging clearly depicted a ‘happy and smiling’ dairy cow and her calf, not a dog or cat to be seen. Remarkably like those drug packages in India!
The currently accepted view here in Tanzania is that nobody, or virtually nobody, uses Diclofenac on cattle (or on horses). They don’t use it mainly because it is too expensive (thankfully). One wonders whether this new Brazilian supply might provide the vanguard – the thin end of another wedge for these Gyps populations that, outside the thankfully large and, in modern terms, relatively unpolluted HRAs (human recreational areas), are already in steep decline?
Another very potent chemical Ivermectin (Avermectin) was also on sale at both these shops. This is a vermifuge (internal parasite remover) which is applied as a pour-on drench to cattle and horses,and is used very widely in the more institutionally-pharmaceuticalized world. From a wild vertebrate’s point of view, Avermectin acts like a very powerful demolition agent, exploding at the heart of the wider natural food web. It renders cow-pats (i.e. cow dung) highly and persistently toxic to most of nature’s very specialized dung fauna, chiefly a great many species of beetles and flies.
The bird species who suffer major collateral damage from the application of this drug are many. First and foremost one thinks of the smaller, more insectivorous falcons (especially the increasingly endangered Lesser Kestrel) and the Lanius shrikes (both the migratory Palearctics and the residents) for whom a plentiful supply of dung beetles is, at certain times and in certain places - as throughout tropical Africa, a truly vital component of the diet. Then there are the Ground Hornbills and the Rollers and …
Watch those skies,
James