Concerns about dwindling population of vultures
JOBURG – The International Union for Conservation of Nature has declared certain vulture species endangered.
The Vulture Conservation Programme (VulPro) is concerned with the dwindling population of vultures in southern Africa and globally due to a variety of threats.
According to this organisation which educates and creates public awareness about vultures, the dwindling population of the vultures could also be the result of poisonings, power line collisions and electrocutions.
In the past 20 years, populations of three Asian vulture species have collapsed primarily as a result of consumption of livestock carcasses contaminated with the veterinary drug diclofenac, according to VulPro.
The organisation in partnership with other international NGOs, reckoned that in Africa, 11 species of vultures continue to decline with the ever-present danger of a widespread African vulture crisis.
“There are fewer than 4 000 breeding pairs of Cape vultures left in southern Africa, having already gone extinct in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Namibia as a breeding species,” according to their statement.
The once ambiguous African white-backed vulture has recently been declared endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2013.
There are questions about the population figures of the remaining vulture species with some estimates of fewer than 100 breeding pairs of lappet-faced vultures left in South Africa and the species being declared endangered in Botswana. The organisation said “Without a unified African conservation approach, vulture species are in grave danger of becoming critically endangered.”
Details: Kerri Wolter VulPro founder and CEO 0828085113. www.vulpro.com, www.iucn.org
