MY title this week comes with an apology to the British film industry, which released that highly successful film, Where No Vultures Fly, in 1951. It was about elephant poaching in East Africa and, ironically, 63 years later I must come back to the subject.
The vulture conservation group, Vulpro, has announced a new international project involving South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia, aimed at conserving southern Africa’s dwindling vulture populations.
The project will involve government officials, NGOs, farmers and communities across all four countries with the object of improving awareness of the importance of vultures in the natural environment.
Vulpro reports that vulture poisoning has always been a problem, but it has mainly been limited to the agricultural sector, farmers trying to get rid of what they perceived as pests. The campaign to inform farmers differently continues, of course, but now a new element has been added to the old problem, that of the mass poisoning of vultures by poachers.
Apparently the problem has increased exponentially with the poaching of elephant and rhino, with the poachers noticing that vultures are spotting freshly-killed animals and are dropping in to the scene, as is their wont. This dropping of the vultures, sometimes a huge network of the birds covering hundreds of square kilometres, is frequently picked up by the anti-poaching authorities and the game is on.
Part of the issue is the mass killing of game, including elephants, at waterholes by poisoning the waterholes that are used by game (there was a recent case in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe when hundreds of elephant were killed in this way, and therefore vultures too).
Over 1000 vultures were poisoned in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia last year and Vulpro hopes to stem that tide.*
And here’s some news about a new farming project in the middle of London.** A team of enthusiasts has leased a six acre site in the British capital to grow upmarket vegetables and herbs, wait for it, 30m below the city streets and in the Clapham tube station.
A series of especially dug tunnels around the Clapham station were used as bomb shelters during World War II, and the team has already successfully grown fancy veggies and herbs under LED lights down there for top London restaurants upstairs and now wants to spread its wings. I wonder what’s next, bananas, pineapples, sugar cane? Cheers and good luck down there.
*Contact: Kerry.wolter@gmail.com or www.vulpro.com if you think you can help, and remember that we have our own vultures down here.
**The Week: The Best of the British and International Media, London.
PS: I was a wide-eyed eight-year-old when I saw Where No Vultures Fly on a Saturday morning on market day in our local town in Devonshire, England (for those of you who might remember, we also saw the latest episode of Flash Gordon). Little did I know that I would end up in Africa and so involved throughout most of my life in wildlife conservation, including elephants, and vultures.
