Vultures targeted by poachers. More than 150 white-backed vultures, an endangered species, have been killed in South Africa and Botswana in the past two days, conservation groups learned on Friday, further increasing their risk of death.
Wild birds regularly fall victim to hunters who poison them to prevent them from reporting their misdeeds to rangers and other guardians of biodiversity.
Vulture poisoning is not uncommon in wildlife-rich southern Africa. The birds are targeted by poachers because they draw attention to their illegal activities by clustering in flight over a carcass.
More than fifty have been found in the Chobe region of Botswana and a hundred in South Africa’s massive Kruger Park, according to the Vulpro group and South African National Parks.
In both cases, the vultures, like a hyena, died after skinning as they do with the meat of a poisoned buffalo.
“A growing risk of extinction” of the species
“The breeding season is now, which makes it even worse,” explained Kerri Wolter, founder of Vulpro, noting that in these first cold days of the southern spring, the chicks will not survive without their parents. .
“Given the critical state of vultures around the world, poisonings of this magnitude put the species at increasing risk of extinction,” Yolan Friedmann, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, a South African group, said in a statement.
An investigation has been opened. Some vultures were found amputated. Their heads are sometimes used in traditional medicine, according to NGOs.
The white-backed vulture, also called the African vulture, is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) “red list” of endangered species.
Source: BFM TV
