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I discovered today, that the poisoning of wildlife in Africa is not unique and that the problem is much more serious globally than any of us had imagined when we started thinking about lions and vultures. I’ve been doing a little snooping around the internet and found these articles which reveal that the correct use of Furadan, a carbamate based agricultural pesticide in crops, can have unintended effects on wildlife that eat the crops in USA. We are so used to seeing Furadan being used to directly poison predators that this research completely surprised me.

The unintentional effects of agricultural poisons on wildlife are harder to prove and to stop as it involves the legal use of chemicals. What we are seeing in Kenya is the inappropriate use of chemicals like Furadan for the intentioned killing wildlife for the most ill informed and poorly thought out reasons. This is what we are most concerned about. It is a problem that is not restricted to Africa. Consider these stories…

In a case in the USA in 1994 an investigation led to the arrest of a farmer called Barnes who laced hamburger meat with Furadan and scattered it around his property to kill coyotes. He was trying deter coyotes from taking his free roaming poultry.

This is an excerpt from the US fish and Wildlife press release

“He did not know his actions would have a “domino effect” resulting in the deaths of many other animals feeding on the carcasses of those killed by the poison bait.

“This case is an unfortunate example of why toxic pesticides are very restricted in their use and method of application,” said Steve Middleton, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Resident Agent in Charge, Law Enforcement, Nashville, Tennessee. “Those who attempt to control predators must realize that the consequences of illegal poisoning may, and likely will, result in the deaths of unintended targets such as hawks, eagles, and family or neighbors’ pets. Furadan will kill anyone or anything that ingests it.”

Furadan is a restricted use pesticide which is only legally used by a certified applicator. To use Furadan as a poison is a violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).

In lieu of appearance in federal court, Barnes paid $2,500 in federal violation notices issued for the illegal taking of the migratory birds.”

I wonder if that was an adequate punishment? What do you think? In Kenya the penalty for killing wildlife by any means is pretty small and ranges from Ksh 2,000 to 20,000 or $27 - $270. Frightening isn’t it?

In another case, A. Laverne Ehlers was also found guilty of poisoning eagles on a pheasant hunting ground. A search on his property found 68 dead raptors including 21 bald and golden eagles on his 6,000 acre property. He was trying to protect the pheasants from being killed by raptors so that he had more for hunting! He did this by lacing tuna cans with Furadan and was also shooting birds. Ehlers plead guilty and paid $80,000 in restitution to the forensic labs and on the 22^nd of March 2002 he was sentenced on the misdemeanor Eagle Act and spent 30 days in prison, 5 months in home detention and had one year of supervised release during which he was not allowed to possess a fire arm.

The poisoning of wildlife is also a major problem in UK where a special program addresses it through CAP the Campaign against illegal Poisoning of wildlife. If any of you are in UK please look them up and download their leaflets that are shown on their website. We are trying to contact them for advice – after all there’s no need to re-invent the wheel. We’d like to learn how others have tackled the problem of illegal poisoning of wildlife.

The BBC in this article today reported that in Scotland people are also poisoning raptors on grouse hunting grounds to protect the grouse for a multi million dollar industry in grouse hunting. I feel so sad that people who hunt think that hunting is conserving the Scottish wilderness … the cash involved seems to be perverting things. Earlier this year BBC also reported that a Scottish farmer lost his agricultural subsidy worth 8,000 pounds (about $16,000) for lacing dead pheasanst with poison. The RSPB Scotland Director Stuart Housden is quoted as having stated

“Landowners and farmers receive very significant public subsidies, in return for which they are supposed to be good stewards of the environment “

We should be worried. Read this below..

According to the above article, despite all the evidence, it’s an uphill battle to keep these poisons off the market in USA, imagine how hard it will be in Kenya and other African countries!

Yet, knowing that the poisoning of wildlife is a problem in UK and USA too makes me even more determined to make sure that our Stop Poisoning Wildlife meeting at WildlifeDirect next week leads to real actions on the ground through better awareness, education, enforcement and policy changes. Please let us know if you have any useful information to share on this topic. We would love to hear your comments and experiences, as well as to receive any support to enable the meeting to take place next week.

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Dear friends, I am posting this appeal to Stop the Poisoning of Wildlife again because it’s critically urgent and we desperately need your help. We are the first organization to raise this issue in Kenya as a national wildlife crisis. It is believed that the sudden decline and total disappearance of lions and vultures in some parts of Africa can be directly attributed to the ease of access and liberal use of deadly poisons like Furadan. This shocking video about the effects of Furadan on a hyena and hundreds of vultures that ate it explains it all.

Apologies to those who saw this before. I just had to post it again because of the problems we have had with the site. When we were asked to hold a meeting of concerned people about devastating and cruel poisoning of wildlife, we expected a few people to come and start a discussion. What we have discovered is an enormous amount of concern in East and Southern Africa and the meeting has swelled to over 25 people with a super range of people from scientists, land owners, and government officials!

We now need to raise $3,000 to cover the costs of getting some of the participants to the meeting, as well as to pay for refreshments, to rent a room big enough for the group, and for all the writing up and follow up.

We are aiming to develop an action plan that will address the following

1. Education - especially of communities who are using illegal poisons, or legal poisons inappropriately

2. Awareness - to get the general public aware of the risks, dangers and impacts of poisoning of wildlife through media coverage

3. Legislation and enforcement - to get officials involved and to look at the possiblity of enforcing existing rules more effectively, or addressing need for new legislation. We demand that the government takes their responsibiliteis seriously - and we will help them to achieve this through our online network.

4. Investigations and monitoring -ensuring that everyone from land owners, scientists and concerned people have the information and tools to establish if poisons are the cause of wildlife mortalities, and to create a reporting mechanism to monitor the trends and respond when needed

5. To create a network of concerned people and a central place for information, ideas, experiences and success can be shared. We will soon have a special blog dedicated to this crisis.

We invite you to be part of this really important initiative by making a small donation to support a delegate to attend the meeting. It will cost 100$ per delegate so all I need is 30 people to donate $100 or 60 people to donate $50. These funds will bring together the people who can make a difference in ending the use of poison in the killing Africa’s big cats, hyenas, vultures and other animals. You can also help us tremendously but circulating this information to everyone in your networks, through email, face book or other means. Or, do you have other ideas to help us? Please drop us a comment. Thank you all and we look forward to hearing from you. Paula

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During the last few months we have been astounded by the number of cases of wildlife poisoing that is going on in East and southern Africa. It looks like there is an increasing use of the Carbamate-based pesticide Furadan which is sold for agricultural purposes. This class of pesticides is deadly for mammals and is used to directly poison predators, and this has been decimating our lion, hyena, vulture and other wetland bird populations. The manner in which these animals die is horrific.

The toxin is easily available and is fairly cheap to purchase requiring no special permits despite it’s toxicity. A few weeks ago the first documented case of murder was recorded in Kenya where a young man poisoned his own father. He has escaped arrest by fleeing! These toxins are not only threatening wildlife but people too. Controlling or stopping it’s use is compounded by a lack of public awareness about risks associated with use of this pesticide, impacts on useful to wildlife or alternatives to predator conflicts.

We are faciliatating several of our bloggers in looking for a solution - these include lion guardians, Simon Thomsett, the Endagered Wildlife Trust of South Africa, Asuka and The Northern Rangelands Trust .This video was made by Simon Thomsett You need to watch it, but I should warn you, it has some disturbing images.

This film shows a typical scene when an animal is baited with poison and then eaten by hyenas and vultures. Hundreds of vultures died in this incident, it’s the sad brutal reality of what his happening in Africa.

Friends, I hope you agree with me, we just can’t sit back any longer and watch our wildlife being poisoned. We insist that all a signatory to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), like the Government of Kenya have a responsibility to put an end to this wanton poisoning of wildlife. WildlifeDirect is calling together a number of organizations, institutions and individuals in Kenya that are involved in conservation, control, investigations and/or research to discuss how we can stop the poisoning of wildlife.

Actions We are Taking at WildlifeDirect

We have organized a meeting on 25th April of stakeholders from Kenya and south Africa to discuss the problem and develop a strategic action plan to tackle the Furadan poisoning problem.

The meeting will take place at 9.30 am at our offices in Nairobi - Timau Plaza, 7th Floor, on Argwings Kodhek Road (opp. Yaya Centre). If you can’t come but would like to participate please send us your concerns, views and any information on the following

1. Evidence of poisoning

2. Types of poisons used, species affected, locations

3. Information on other ongoing efforts to stop poisoning (public education, legislation, enforcement, conservation)

4. Advice on how we can finance this.

Any donations made on this blog will be used to enable this meeting to take place to enable participation of attendees from remote corners of Africa. We are trying to raise $2,000 to pay for one South African expert, and for transport for those coming from out of town Kenya, refreshments, and for distribution of information.

My dream is that we can address the education and cultural issues, the legislation and enforcement, monitoring and investigatins, as well as the rehabilitation and conservation of poisoned animals. We need practical approaches to stem this. For example in England one can call a free number to report poisoning

0800 321 600

Woudn’t it be nice to have one in every African country with a mechanism to respond to all the reports?

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