We overlook their role in disposing of carrion (Image: Theo Allofs/Corbis)
Nobody liked vultures much until now, but the change isn’t good news. Big birds appear to be next on the hunters’ list for the bushmeat trade, and vultures are their new favourite.
Researchers visited hundreds of bushmeat stalls at 67 markets in 12 countries across West and Central Africa, and found 52 species of vultures and other raptors for sale. More than a quarter of them are classified as near threatened, vulnerable or endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.
Team member Ralph Buij of Wageningen University in the Netherlands estimates that more than 6000 of these birds are traded across West Africa alone each year, including around a thousand endangered hooded vultures.
The numbers may not sound huge, but Buij says that the trade represents “a sizeable proportion” of the populations of some species. The team estimates that 5 to 8 per cent of West Africa’s 450 or so white-headed vultures end up on meat stalls each year, for instance.
“These are long-lived birds that reproduce only slowly. They are being largely wiped out in West Africa,” says study co-author Darcy Ogada, of the Idaho-based non-profit Peregrine Fund and the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.
Bushmeat specialist John Fa of Imperial College London says that as the forests empty of animals, birds are making up an ever greater proportion of meat sales. Besides filling stomachs, vulture parts are widely used in traditional medicine. This is especially so in Benin and Nigeria, where demand is so high that birds are imported from Chad and Burkina Faso.
The trade is lucrative. A large vulture carcass can earn a hunter as much as several months’ pay in a regular job.
Most vultures are killed by poisoned bait. They are an easy target, since they feed only on carrion. And their decline could affect the wider ecosystem, too.
“Vultures play a vital role in clearing up carcasses of wild animals and livestock, suppressing the transmission of diseases to humans via mammal scavengers such as dogs,” says Phil Shaw of the University of St Andrews in the UK.
Earlier this year, Shaw, Ogada and their colleagues co-authored the first Africa-wide study of vultures’ decline. They found that numbers of seven key species have fallen by 80 per cent over the past 30 years, and suggest that this qualifies them for critically endangered status. They say a large proportion of deaths were down to hunting for the trade in traditional medicines.
The African population crash follows a similar decline in vultures in India, caused by a common painkiller given to cattle, which is toxic for vultures that eat their carcasses. That, in turn, is thought to have resulted in thousands of people dying from rabies transmitted by dogs that have eaten infected carcasses, ones that would once have been consumed by vultures.
Fa says the solution is not to ban hunting: rural people need to hunt for food, he says. But protecting their food supply while safeguarding the vultures will require keeping bushmeat out of fast-growing urban markets, where meat sourced from domesticated animals is usually on sale anyway.
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