Lion Guardians Good news

Last December I was with my family in Kenya’s Maasai Mara and had a wonderful time. We saw all sorts of wild animals and of course my grand daughters thrilled to the sight of lions. I asked out guide, a young Maasai moran named Ben, if he had ever had to kill a lion. “Yes, three times” was his brief reply. I did not press further as he seemed somewhat embarrassed about it. He would have done it for one of two reasons.

In 2006, Leelah Hazzah, then a PhD candidate working for the Lion Guardian program on the Mbirikani group ranch beneath the majestic peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro, wrote in her thesis that there are two basic reasons why Maasai hunt lions.  The best known is their ritualized Olimayio ceremony, when young men pass into manhood. The other is for revenge, and is called Olkiyioi.

It is a really nice change to be able to write a positive report about an African conservation issue. In The Trouble With Lions (TTWL) I expressed tentative hope that the Lion Guardians program in Kenya’s Maasailand would reverse the long trend of lion killing, by spear or poison, that has been going on for far too long. A hundred and more years ago, when lions ruled the roost and terrorized humans throughout sub-Saharan Africa the Masai, Nandi and other cattle herding tribes had little choice but to try and control the depredation wreaked upon their livestock. They did it with spears in ritualized hunts that “blooded”, sometimes literally, the young men whose initiation involved a lion hunt. They were the warriors sent out to fight the enemy.

The sort of outcome that occurred was recorded by Teddy Roosevelt’s cameraman in the very early part of the 20^th century. A group of Nandi had surrounded a lion and speared it The attached picture, scanned from the book’s pages, show the results.

In TTWL I recorded the information gleaned by several scientists about the decline in lion numbers throughout Africa since about 1950, when there were about half a million on the continent. By 1975 there were about 200,000. By the end of 2006 there may have been 28,000.

Since those spearing events new ways to kill lions have emerged. Of course “white hunters” took their trophy toll with heavy rifles, but these were by no means the only methods. The most insidious are snares and poison. These two lions, poisoned with Furadan, a compound banned in the USA and Europe, were photographed by Amy Howard after the killers had stripped their manes. I have blogged before about Furadan and you can find those stories by going to the index at right.

A typical snaring may take a lot longer to kill a lion, or any other victim. This one had been snared in the Serengeti NP when veterinarian, friend and former student Dr. Patrick Garcia came across it and watched its death throes. 

The good news is that in parts of Maasailand the killing has stopped and young men are now actively engaged in lion conservation. You can read all about it, and a whole lot more, in the Lion Guardian’s annual report here, and I urge you to take a look at it, even at the risk of taking you away from my own page. Check out the 2011 report to see how things have changed. This is an important stuff!

Here is the picture taken by Leelah Hazzah of a moran named Mokoi using a telemetry receive to track one of the lions on the ranch.

Leelah, now more properly known as Dr. Hazzah, after receiving her PhD, is now the Lion Guardians Director, but of course the credit for initiating all the work goes to Dr. Laurence Frank of the University of California, Berkeley who has worked on large predators for over 40 years and is the Living With Lions Project Director.

As I said, a happy story. Long may it continue!

 

Furadan in the USA

Linkhttp://www.news-leader.com

A recent story out of the state of Missouri caught my eye because it involved the prosecution and sentencing of a man from Raymondville for using Furadan (Carbofuran) to kill wildlife. The story appeared on Nov 3rd & 4th in the on-line newspaper the Springfield News-Leader, which you can find here.

I have posted in Furadan a few times before, all to do with African wildlife, and in doing so was under the mistaken belief that the stuff was banned in North America. In Africa it has been used to deliberately kill lions and to capture huge numbers of birds. You can read about that in the blogs of March 15 & 30, May 29 and June 13 & 18.

This case is interesting because the culprit, one Eric Bryant, carried out the offense in January this year. He had treated some deer meat with the poison in an effort to control coyotes. In six weeks had killed at least three domestic dogs, several coyotes, a gray fox, a skunk, a red-tailed hawk and three American crows. These creatures were found by federal agents, and there is of course no way of knowing how many other animals perished.

My own yellow lab, Caesar, would be just as susceptible as any other dog, maybe even more so given his breed's tendency to eat anything he finds.

This just goes to show that the poison can kill a wide range of species. It acts by disrupting nerve conduction. The stuff is highly toxic to humans, and as little as a quarter tea-spoon can be fatal.

Because it is such an effective pesticide, and kills insects on contact, it is much favoured by crop producers. Farmers who apply it must do so in closed systems and one wonders how much risk the drivers of modern tractors, with their efficient air conditioners, are running. Can Furadan in a mist be brought back into the cab and create a hazard for the driver?

Wildlife declines in Kenya

Link

My In Box of yesterday carried an interesting Kenya-based article from the Wildlife Diseases News Digest. The somewhat over the top headline “Kenya on the brink of recording big five extinction” is at least an attention grabber. It came from the East African Standard and highlights, once again, the problems that plague the country’s wildlife situation.

The article, dated June 7th, is by one Joe Kiarie and tells how four cows were killed by lions in the community of Oloolaimutiak within the Masai Mara National Reserve. Naturally the villagers reacted and laced the carcasses with poison. ONE young lion died within 100 metres of the scene and four others are missing. The inevitable “by-kill” of vultures occurred.
No poison is named, but it is a racing certainty that they used Furadan. Important questions remain. How did they get the stuff? Was it some residual stock or were they able to purchase it in a village shop? In the past many shops carried signs such as “Agricultural Supplies” and in them Furadan was readily available. As those who saw the CBS 60 Minutes show in March this year will recall the manufacturers of the chemical stated that they would discontinue its supply. If you missed it, I referred to it in my blogs of March 15th & 29th.

It is not just lions and poison that Kiarie mentions. He states “Three days before, a poacher was shot dead after he was caught removing a horn from a black rhino in Laikipia.” This picture accompanies his article. He goes on to mention some other species. These include roan and sable antelope (the black one with the huge horns), Hirola, or Hunter’s antelope and Grevy’s zebra. Rather than bore with numbers, the Grevy’s shows the trend. In 1970 there were thought to be some 20,000 head in East Africa (many in Ethiopia). Perhaps there are 18,00 today, and many of these are on private reserves. This picture, taken by Dick Neal in Kenya in 1975 shows a mixed aggregation of the common or Burchell’s zebra, with their broad stripes, and the taller, large eared Grevy’s with the narrow stripes. It has been suggested that there may be fewer Grevy’s zebra than there are the much higher profiled black rhino in Africa.

In a related article by Beatrice Obwocha of the 11th of May this year the plight of one of the world’s great sights, the massed ranks of flamingos on Kenya’s Lake Nakuru. In a nutshell, the numbers are at an all-time low. There may not have been more than a thousand of them after the long drought between November and March. Contrast this with numbers that were once thought to exceed half a million.
And why? Partly the drought (an estimated 100,000 returned between March and May), but a much bigger and long-term problem comes from human activity. The water source for the lake lies on the escarpment above it. Water levels are down, alkalinity is up, and the algae upon which the birds feed are not thriving. On top of this the nearby town of Nakuru has grown enormously and the sewage and agricultural waste from the surrounding farms all drain into the lake.

What neither author mentioned up front is the core problem of human population expansion, which inevitably leads to crowding for space and diminishing resources. When people’s livelihoods and way of life are threatened they will react, either vigorously, in the case of lion attacks, or insidiously, even unknowingly, in the Lake Nakuru example.

Deliberate crop spraying with Furadan kills birds

Link http://www.peopleandwildlife.org.uk/, http://wildlifedirect.org/blogsList.php, http//:stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org/, http://wdin.blogspot.com/

Another worrisome Furadan story comes this time from Mt. Kenya's eastern slopes. It is here, in the hot dry country of Tharaka district, where rainfall is limited, and one of the few crops that can be grown is millet, that a friend of our reports the death of hundreds of red-billed queleas.
These diminutive birds, only 13 cm (5 inches) long from beak to tail-tip would be no challenge on their own. When they flock in their hundreds, or even thousands, they can create havoc as crop-raiders. There are reports of large flocks almost blotting out the sun, just like locusts.

In Tharaka, these migratory birds turned up at just the wrong time and attacked, if that is the right word, the millet crop just as it was ripening. The solution?

Somebody called somebody, and the next thing was the sight of a helicopter flying over the crops spraying something. Soon after that birds started to die, and our friend even had birds drop out of the sky on to the table in front of him. Necropsies confirmed Furadan.

What will happen to the people who harvest the poison-laced millet is unknown. Maybe a copious washing with water will remove the Furadan. It had better, as the stuff is potent, half a teaspoon being enough to kill an adult human.

Furadan, birds, Kenya, lions

Linkhttp//:stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org/, http://wdin.blogspot.com/

The October 2008 issue of the magazine Kenya Birds contains a thoroughly diusturbing article by Martin Odino, Darcy Ogada and Simon Musila. Its tile is Furadan killing birds on a large scale in Bunyala Rice Fields, Western Kenya. The front cover shows an open-billed stork being held in someone’s hands, and I thought that it was probably a carcass. Not so. The article shows how live birds are used as decoys to attract numerous birds to sites where furadan soaked rice is used as bait. The technique involves the rescue of a poisoned birds and its treatment with copious quantities of water. The live birds are tethered close to the bait, and their primary feathers are removed. Birds that do not eat rice, such as opened-billed storks, are poisoned when snails have furadan inserted into their shells and the birds eat them.

This is another version of the grizzly story of bushmeat in Africa. The baited birds are either killed with sticks when still alive, but disoriented, or collected when dead. The bodies are taken to market and sold. According to the three authors the hunters claim that if the crop and stomach are removed prior to cooking no harm will come to the consumer.

I have written about the use, or misuse of furadan for the poising of predators, but this is something different and some will wonder what is behind it. The explanation is simple. Hunger and poverty. A year’s supply (200 gm) of furadan costs less than $1.50. In their report the three authors, who met hunters ranging from teenagers to men over 70, were told by one hunter that the daily harvest ranged from 25 to 200 individuals of mixed bird species.

Folks interested in birds and conservation can subscribe to Kenya Birds, which is published by the Bird Committee of the East Africa Natural History Society, and can contact Catherine Ngarachu at office@naturekenya.org.

Furadan again

Each week the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation puts out several excellent shows that fit into the “Investigative Journalism” box. Recently (May 26th) the host of one of those shows, Rick MacInnes-Rae, did an in-depth report on environmental issues from Cambodia and Russia’s Lake Baikal. I have added below the email letter I sent to the comment box on the show’s email address. Not long afterwards Rick contacted me to find out how to pronounce my name so that he could read the piece on air. Of course he edited it a bit, as all good hosts are likely to do. I have asked if I can make a copy of the email as an audio clip, but have not yet heard back from Rick or the copyright folks at CBC. If they do give the go-ahead I will add it to this blog. (By the way, the name is pronounced like the famous Dimple Haig scotch)

Meanwhile if anyone wants to hear the show they can get at it though the CBC web site. The full 50 odd minutes of each show lie under Dispatches, June 16, 2008 -- Mumbai, India, Montreal, Iraq, Managua, Nicaragua, Woodland Hills, California 
or Dispatches, May 19, 2008, Cambodia, Siberia, Oxford, Beirut, and Washington.

I missed the May 26th show that has a cryptic précis that goes “Pygmy elephants versus palm oil.” I’ll pick that one up as it would seem to fit the theme.

So here is my letter in response the Cambodia & Baikal reports of May 19.

Rick,
It was good to hear this evening that Dispatches continues to tell people about wildlife and conservation issues all over the world. The stories from Cambodia and Lake Baikal are part of that genre, and it is important that you folks continue that line.

Another story that might interest you and your listeners is the use of the agricultural pesticide carbofuran, sold in East Africa as Furadan, which as been wreaking havoc on wildlife populations. The chemical is not only effective as an insecticide, and no doubt proves useful in crops ranging from cotton to maize, but it is also a deadly poison, in minute amounts, for large mammals and birds. I have been taking Canadian veterinary students to Uganda for several years, where we link up with students and faculty from the Makerere University’s Department of Wildlife and Animal Resource Management and study the complicated matrix of the human x livestock x wildlife interface. We have witnessed first-hand how lions in Queen Elizabeth National Park have been poisoned in revenge killings. It is not only lions. An entire clan of hyaenas was wiped out late last year, and vultures have virtually disappeared from the park. Where we saw hundreds in 2007, we saw only one in February this year. The cattle herders in the park have become adept at hiding their use of the poison and are alleged to now be using it preemptively. If a small calf is killed by being given a dose of Furadan orally, and then left to die in the open, any predator feeding on the carcass will also succumb. A recent example of this occurred in Kenya’s famous Maasai Mara when a poisoned hippo (a crop raider?) was partially consumed by lions. Four of them developed signs of poisoning, and two of them died.

There are lots more factors around this subject, but I hope that this note will stimulate you sufficiently to pick up on a possible story and highlight an increasing threat to conservation in Africa.

Another great investigative journalism show, well worth a listen whenever you get the chance, is the CBC's As it Happens. Go for it.

Wildlife blogs, wildlife poisoning, wildlife pictures

Been thinking about blogs, wildlife poisons and attempts to forestall or even reverse some of the trends that seem to be going on.

A major blog collector lies at a site called Saving Endangered Animals. Within the main home page are a large number of blog images, each one a mini-portrait of someone or something of relevance to the subject.

There are Quick Links and blogs galore – too many for me to count. Some that are relevant to my own books The Trouble With Lions and Wrestling With Rhinos are of course about those species, but also about the bigger problem of wildlife poisoning.

Two lion specific ones that tell how things have changed in Kenyan Maasailand, and give a glimmer of hope for the bigger picture in Africa are from the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project - and its close relative the Lion Guardians.

The Furadan issue -a subject to which I have referred in previous blogs (see May 5th) comes up in several places. Furadan is the trade name of a carbamate poison developed as a crop insecticide, but happens to kill mammals and birds with seeming impunity - is a given plenty of coverage in a blog called Stop Wildlife Poisoning.
The authors are seeking as much information and input about poisoning incidents as they can possibly get. If I have a quibble with their opening statement of May 15th it is that they seem to restrict their search to Kenya. From my own experience, related in the opening sentence of The Trouble With Lions and in other stories in the text, I know that the stuff has been used in Uganda, and it would not surprise me at all if reports of its use turn up elsewhere.

Another general blog, which also refers to an upcoming article on poisoning with Furadan, is the East African Wildlife Society’s blog; neatly named The Water Hole. For those who don’t know it, the EAWLS publishes an enjoyable magazine called Swara (Kiswahili for antelope). It carries a wide variety of articles on wildlife subjects and does not shy away from appropriate commentary on controversies or comment on the behaviour of politicians when they ignore or actively try to damage wildlife initiatives.

From the Wildlife Conservation Society comes their “State of the Wild 2008-2009” announcement, which you can find here. This is a notice about their latest book on the subject. It consists of a series of important essays by well-known scientists and, right at the start of the web site, a marvelous series of photos of rare and critically endangered animals. All you have to do is click on the first image, a Sumatran rhinoceros, and up they come. If you think African rhinos look primitive, wait until you see this one.

Another taste of what if in store for me, when my copy arrives, and for those who care to get the book for themselves, lies in the advance praise written by natural history writer Carl Safina. He states

"This book delivers much more than the 'state of the wild.' It identifies the trends, trajectories, and principles that must organize our thinking. Think of it as an information handbook for the coming rumble over life on Earth. It's much less about what is—and much more about what's coming at us".

I have ordered a second copy for the library at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and will ask for it to be put on reserve so that students who are to join me in Uganda in February next year will have some reading material.

A final fascinating titbit that came up on the BBC website this morning was also about rhinos, but not in Africa. Take a look at this film clip captured on an automatic infrared camera that is aptly titled Rarest rhinoceros wrecks camera. Six "R" sounds in four words. The headline writer must have enjoyed the alliteration in that one – virtually a no-brainer!