Baraza

Category: Poisoning wildlife, richard leakey, wildlifedirect | Date: Apr 02 2009 | By: admin

Dear Friends,

I have some AMAZING  NEWS. It is rare that WildlifeDirect has such a great impact on an important story  - we have been fighting a battle to get the pesticide Furadan, which is a carbamate based poison used to kill predators banned in Kenya.

Honestly, it’s been a losing battle, the authorities here refuse to take responsibility, the Kenya Wildlife Service blames the agrochemical association and agricultural minsitry, the ministries blame the people for illegal ‘mis-use’ of the pesticide while the PCPB, the Pesticide Controle and Products Board deny that the pesticide is even being misused despite all our evidence, and those concerned with saving predators have been reporting collapsing lion and vulture populations, …frankly we almost gave up hope. When a USA based news TV programme, CBS 60 Minutes called us we agreed to do interviews and help with the program although it did not occur to us how poweful this could be. The show aired on Sunday and visitation to our website peaked on Monday, and then I recieved this note from our chairman. Richard Leakey today

Dear WildlifeDirect team

I just received a call from the CEO of the organization that manufactures Furidan. They are discontinuing supply
to all African countries where there are predators including South Africa, all of Eastern Africa. He has directed
Juanaco in Kenya and other distributors in Tanzania to  buy back all stocks held by retailers and he believes
that within 8 weeks it will be done with. He has offered to work with us to see that similar products are not taken
to Africa byers. So well done, we have another success on our list !

Richard.

Richard Leakey, FRS.

So, I’m feeling a little high now, we want to thank Anthony Kasanga and all the other the lion guardians for telling the story so poignantly, and of course for saving our lions. We also thank Martion Odino who has kept up the pressure on everyone by revealing the scale of furadan poisoning in Kenya through his research and by writing the Stop Wildlife Poisoning blog. I especially want to thank Drew and his team at CBS for following through with such a powerful story!

It’s wonderful how powerful our campaign has been, please continue to help us by circulating this information as widely as possible and supporting our blogs that are keeping wildlife safe. Let’s hope that images like these will be only in the past.

Kind regards

Paula (Executive Director WildlifeDirect)

Tags: conservation, FMC, Furada, Lions, Poisoning wildlife, richard leakey, stop wildlife poisoning, wildlifedirect