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Category: Africa, WildlifeDirect news, conservation, wildlifedirect | Date: Nov 17 2009 | By: Maina

Paula was one of the speakers in a recently held Technology conference in Nairobi. Mark Kaigwa (aka mkaigwa), one of the friends of WildlifeDirect, who was attending the conference on 8 August 2009, wrote the great entry about Paula’s presentation reproduced below. Thank you Bwana Kaigwa.

Engaging Conversation on Conservation in Africa
Posted on Tuesday, 17 November 2009 by mkaigwa

Paula at TEDx Nairobi (Photo via mkaigwa)

A self-confessed tree hugger, Paula Kahumbu opened by reminding us how extraordinarily privileged Kenya is as a country as far as diversity is concerned, and how most times, it’s taken for granted by Kenyans themselves. By demonstration when she asked to see those in the crowd who had been to a National Park in the last month, only a handful inferred to the affirmative. It brought life to her statement!

She shared on how Kenya has one of the world’s largest diversities of bees – over 1500 species. We assume the Maasai Migration is going to be around for generations (for those who’ve not seen it already.)

Her second confession was that she didn’t have a television. Her veranda is her television from her home on the edge of the Nairobi National Park and you can always follow her amazing tweets and extraordinary wildlife pictures.

Paula elaborated her reason why she’s a wildlife conservationist and set out to make a case. “We’ve often been told that wildlife is crucial to the economy and our economic development. However, we’ve been misled to believe that it is important for tourism alone.”

“The world’s current population is 6.9 Billion people. We’re far too many people for the planet…,” as Paula showed and while we’re now aware of our carbon footprint, we shouldn’t forget our ecological footprint. We’re using the earth, our forests, our seas and changing the landscape faster than it can regenerate itself.

“Over 1000 species are disappearing every year,” she stated. Adding that two-thirds of these species have named, they’re yet to be classified and already disappear off the face of the earth. 25% of our mammals are facing extinction. A sad reality to come to terms with.

Paula went on to share information from a recent study done in the United States where scientists conducted research and studied how valuable insects were to the economy. As insects performed basic services for human beings and the value in a year is $57 Billion and that’s a service that is free; remarkable.

The US is facing a major crisis with their bees, having lost around 80% of their bees. Bees contribute about $15 Billion a year to the US economy and that brought home a stark reality of the situation, given that Kenya has one of the largest biodiversities of bees.

She went on to elaborate on the current drought in Kenya (which has since turned into rains, and occasionally floods in some provinces). The reason why this drought is hurting, Paula said, was because we have degraded our landscapes to such an extent and silt is filling up our dams and the water is unable to penetrate the soil and replenish the reservoirs.

The global cost of saving our protected areas is $45 Billion a year for the whole world. The estimated value of these protected areas in terms of ecological services is actually $5 Trillion. She jokingly asked Aly Khan Satchu what the return on investment was.She brought the point back to order that we’re losing the race with our environment and examined the situation in Kenya with the Kenya Government and she frankly admitted that we’re losing the race to conserve our wildlife.

She also told the amazing story behind Owen and Mzee, her award-winning children’s book about a hippopotamus and a tortoise. Paula was working for Bamburi Cement in the coast running a small sanctuary, using a rehabilitated quarry where they kept hippopotamus after the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that hit the coast just outside of Malindi.

The story, involves a hippopotamus calf that was orphaned during the tsunami and had to be taken care of. The 1 year-old hippo mistook a Seychellois tortoise for its mother, and not longer after the first pictures were taken, they quickly became viral and were abuzz all over the internet.

People were soon calling, texting and emailing asking how the tortoise and baby hippopotamus were. By this time, they had both been named, the hippo; Owen, after the man who caught him and the tortoise; Mzee – a respectful Swahili word for elderly person.

So they started a diary, written by a man who had been working at the sanctuary for 25 years, Steven Twaid. He would show what was happening with Owen and Mzee as they played, swam and grew closer together. Soon, they had over 500,000 people reading and keeping up with the life of Owen and Mzee every month. From this, they developed the children’s book – Owen and Mzee.

The book has since sold over 1 million copies and is in 24 languages across the world. From this, her meeting with Dr. Richard Leakey lead to her running Wildlife Direct which has grown from 7 blogs to over 115 different blogs, each with its own set of bloggers, volunteers and fundraisers. They’ve since raised over $1,000,000 since 2007 and now, enable people all over the world to donate and adopt projects and conservancies as they support them.

An example she raised was in the Maasai Mara where, after the post-election violence, the Maasai Mara needed funds to sustain its conservation efforts to cover the shortfall due to the nosedive in tourist revenues. They raised $280,000 towards this effort.

She spoke of the Lion Guardians project with Anthony Kasanga, a 23 year old Maasai man who is a poacher turned Lion protector. The Maasai people, as a rite of passage, have their young men kill a lion. Anthony, together with the Lion Guardians, has been able to raise $28,000 and develop a strong international following as he educates Maasai in the region on how and why to protect lions.

Paula shared on a trend that Wildlife Direct began noticing – lions were being poisoned with a cheap over-the-counter pesticide called Furadan. Kenya’s already lost 85% of lions as a result of poisoning. The impact on tourism, if this trend continues would be devastating. Luckily, Wildlife Direct rallied support and was even contacted by the US-based manufacturer of the pesticide, who agreed to take it off the market in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The challenges for Wildlife Direct include raising support, especially in this period of the recession and developing the technology from their base in Kenya. Changing perceptions from a reliance on governments to bring environmental change is something Wildlife Direct is set on developing in Africa

A key strength of Wildlife Direct is its transparency, where all support is accounted for and results are documented by the bloggers and every action is shown and shared. The tangible impact shown to the world, shows the potential of the model behind Wildlife Direct which can be replicated and applied to different fields such as poverty alleviation and education.

Tags: biodiversity, conservation, environment, extinction, furadan, Masai Mara, Paula Kahumbu, poisoning, population, species, TEDx Nairobi, wildlife, wildlifedirect

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Category: Lions, Pride of Kenya, WildlifeDirect news, big cats, furadan, human wildlife conflict, predators, richard leakey | Date: Sep 08 2009 | By: Maina

WildlifeDirect issued this press release on Thursday, 3 September 2009 after Dr Richard Leakey inaugurated the ‘Androcles Lion’ by appending his signature as support for the campaign against lion (and other wildlife) poisoning using carbofurans (Furadan). The release received audience among readers of Nairobi’s Capital FM’s site, was picked by AFP, and blogged about at the Big Cat News blog. I thought you should also have the opportunity to refer to it.

Nairobi, 3 September 2009 - Renowned Kenyan conservationist, Dr Richard Leakey, who is also the chairman of WildlifeDirect, today inaugurated the display of the WildlifeDirect lion statue that will be creating public awareness about poisoning of lions by cattle herders using Furadan. The lion statue, which is part of the Pride of Kenya campaign to create awareness about the status of, and to raise funds for, conservation of Kenya’s remaining 2,100 lions, will be on public display at Yaya Centre, a popular shopping mall in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

On Tuesday, September 2, WildlifeDirect joined the Born Free Foundation in the official launch of the Pride of Kenya campaign at the Nairobi National Park. Integrated in this campaign to save the last lions of Kenya is the inauguration of WildlifeDirect’s call to have all carbofurans - especially Furadan, a lethal agricultural pesticide that is behind the death of 75 lions in the last 4 years - banned in Kenya.

With the life-sized lion statue christened The Androcles Lion as the centerpiece of their campaign, WildlifeDirect seeks to rally support from prominent Kenyans and the general public to have the deadly carbofuran class of pesticides banned from the Kenyan market by the Kenyan Parliament. The Androcles Lion, which is painted Fuchsia, the prominent colour on the retail packaging of the most used carbofuran in Kenya - Furadan - and with chains around it denoting bondage by these poisons, seeks to communicate the threat that carbofurans are posing to the survival of this charismatic species.

Prominent personalities such as Kenya’s renowned conservationist and anthropologist Dr Richard Leakey - who became the first person to endorse the campaign - UNEP Director Achim Steiner, Nobel Laureate Wangari Mathai among others, have been invited to show their support for the push to have Furadan banned in Kenya by inscribing a signed message supporting the ban on the body of the lion. The objective is to initiate public debate and support of the proposed ban such that Kenya’s Parliament will finally discuss the motion and eventually pass a law that makes it illegal to import, manufacture, repackage or sell this killer pesticide and anything else in it’s class.

Kenya’s lion population is declining at an alarming pace and climate change, habitat destruction and conflict with humans have been the key drivers for this precipitous fall in numbers. On Monday, August 17, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) announced that Kenya’s lion population has been declining by an average 100 animals per year in the last 7 years and now stands at a little over 2,000 individuals. In the 1970s there were about 30,000 lions in Kenya. Given the current decline rate, lions will become extinct in Kenya in just two decades. KWS spokesman Paul Udoto told the media on 17 August that “communities are the largest threat to the lions and other cats.”

It is through conservationists blogs hosted by WildlifeDirect that the widespread use of Furadan by cattle herders for retaliatory poisoning of lions suspected of killing livestock first came to the limelight. With increasing reports of lion and other predators as well as birds of prey and scavengers being poisoned using Furadan, WildlifeDirect convened, in 2007, a meeting to bring together affected conservationists and Furadan importation firms in order to chart a way forward in addressing this situation. The meeting resolved that a total ban on Furadan would be the best way to eliminate herders’ access to this lethal poison and thus reduce poisoning of lions. The Stop Wildlife Poisoning campaign was thus launched.

On 29 March this year, American broadcaster, CBS, aired a documentary showing the devastating effect that Furadan was having on Kenya’s lions. Following this documentary, and the information that WildlifeDirect had provided the Member of Parliament for Naivasha, Honourable John Mututho - who brought the issue to parliament - the question of banning Furadan was discussed in Parliament. Parliamentary recommendation was that a committee be formed to craft a notice that would, if integrated into law, make it illegal to import Furadan and other carbofurans into Kenya. The Honourable Minister for Wildlife and Natural Resources, Dr Noah Wekesa, instructed that that committee be formed.

With the distinctively pink lion with a mane covered with replica Kenyan currency notes, representing the greed that is driving the sales of a poison that has already been banned in the US and Europe WildlifeDirect will continue to drum up support to the member for Naivasha and all those parliamentarians who support banning the substance. WildlifeDirect’s quest is to end the poisoning of lions by herders using Furadan, and that is the message that the Androcles Lion will be sending as it goes on public display at Yaya Centre.

WildlifeDirect is a non-profit conservation organization based in Kenya that uses the internet to create awareness about conservation issues and to raise funds for conservation through Web Logs (blogs) written by field conservationists. WildlifeDirect endeavors to create a movement powerful enough to produce a virtual endowment capable of reversing the catastrophic loss of habitats and species. WildlifeDirect is Registered as a charity in the USA and in Kenya.

# # #

For more information and high-res pictures contact:
Samuel Maina maina@wildlifedirect.org

Low res pictures of the inauguration by Dr Leakey are published in the Baraza blog http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org/2009/09/03/the-mighty-androcles-lion-comes-home/

To learn more about the Stop Wildlife Poisoning campaign go to http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org

The CBS 60 Minutes documentary can be found here
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/26/60minutes/main4894945.shtml

The Pride of Kenya campaign website is http://www.prideofkenya.co.ke/ and their blog here http://prideofkenya.wildlifedirect.org/

Tags: extinct, furadan, Lions, poisoning, Pride of Kenya, richard leakey

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Category: Kenya, Lions, WildlifeDirect news, furadan | Date: Jun 15 2009 | By: Maina

The fight to get Furadan out of reach of herders and farmers who have been using it in retaliatory killing of lions, hyenas and other predators; the incidental killing of vultures and other raptors; as well as killing of birds for food, got a boost today. In this weeks East African weekly newspaper, there was a whole spread - consisting of two articles - talking about this lethal pesticide.

The first article, written by travel writer and friend of WildlifeDirect, Rupi Mangat, discussed the hope that we have now that Furadan is being discussed in parliament. In the article, Rupi says:

“According to WildlifeDirect Executive Director, Dr Paula Kahumbu, through Hon. John Mututho, chairman of the Agricultural Committee, Kenya’s parliament has instructed that the US-based Farm Machinery and Chemicals (FMC) mop up the remaining Furadan in Kenya and that an environmental committee be set up to draft the legal notice for the final ban”

Rupi’s article can be found in the East African online

In the second story, an East African correspondent, Philip Ngunjiri, writes about the remnants of Furadan still being secretly peddled by unscrupulous agro-veterinary shops in rural Kenya even after FMC withdrew the chemical from Kenya and instituted a buy-back programme.

Philip Nunjiri’s article in the same website

Tags: East African, FMC, furadan, Kenya, Lions, Parliament, poisoning

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Category: Africa, Poisoning wildlife, big cats, conservation | Date: Jun 03 2009 | By: Maina

In today’s national newspapers in Kenya, there were two stories about lion poisoning in the Masai Mara. One in The Standard reports the Minister for Forestry and Wildlife Services Dr Noah Wekesa saying that lions were dying in the Masai Mara and Furadan was responsible. He however referred Hon. John Mututho’s call for its ban to the Agriculture Minister and the Pesticide Control Products Board.

In the other news item appearing in the Daily Nation, the Kenya Wildlife Service, which is the custodian of Kenya’s wildlife, has accused farmers of poisoning one lion, some hyenas and 35 vultures in the Mara. The KWS said that there were traces of a pinkish substance on the carcase that was used to bait the these carnivores and scavengers.

The articles are not available online so we did the next best thing down here:

Tags: Africa, furadan, Kenya, KWS, Lions, Parliament, poisoning

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Category: Africa, Kenya, Poisoning wildlife, WildlifeDirect news, furadan | Date: Jun 02 2009 | By: Maina

Dr Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director of WildifeDirect was interviewed by Voice of America (VoA) today about Furadan. Paula disscussed the expected call for a total ban on Furadan by the Honourable John Mututho, Member of Parliament for Naivasha and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture in Tuesday’s parliament session.

Look out for the airing of the interview expected at between 1600 and 1800 UTC. It will be available in the English to Africa section of the VoA website

Look out for it.

Update:

The interview airs at Africa News Tonight at 1600 and 1800 GMT and the stream is already on www.voaafrica.com. The story has already been posted on the Website. You can already download the MP3 file or listen to the interview from the site.

Tags: FMC, furadan, Kenya, Lions, Parliament, poisoning, wildlife

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Category: Africa, Kenya, Lions, Poisoning wildlife, big cats, conservation, furadan, predators | Date: Jun 02 2009 | By: Maina

NAIROBI, Kenya - 2 June 2009. A Kenyan legislator, Honourable John Mututho, is today expected to ask for total ban on Furadan in parliament. Hon. Mututho, who represents the Naivasha Constituency and is Chair of the Parliamentary Agricultural Committee, will ask the Minister for Forestry and Wildlife to effect a total ban on this pesticide that is reported to have killed more than 30 lions, hundreds of vultures and other animals.

Furadan is the brand name of Philadelphia-based FMC Corporation’s formulation of carbofuran-based pesticides considered to be the most lethal in their class. Available cheaply in Kenya, the pesticide is being used by local herdsmen in retaliatory poisoning of lions and other carnivores blamed of predation on their livestock.

It is more than a year ago when Kenya’s conservation icon, Dr Richard Leakey started calling for a ban on the lethal chemical that was recently the subject of a documentary by American broadcaster CBS.

On 29 April, after American broadcaster, CBS, aired a documentary about lion poisoning in Kenya in their 60 Minutes programme, the pesticide manufacturers, FMC Corporation, immediately announced the withdrawal of Furadan in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and instructed the local distributor, Juanco Limited to immediately begin a buy-back programme in Kenya to remove all available stock from the shelves. There are only about 2100 lions left in Kenya.

The buy back programme is considered by local conservationists to be largely effective but some agro-vet stores are still hiding old stock and selling it under the counter. As a result, more than one month later, the pesticide is still reported to be causing wildlife deaths in various locations in Kenya.

On 25 May, one lion, a number of hyenas and 35 vultures are reported to have died at Olololaimutiak gate in the Masai Mara Reserve from retaliatory poisoning from a cow carcase that had been laced with poison suspected to be Furadan. The cow had been killed inside the reserve where they were grazing illegally.

These recent cases have prompted a group of Kenyan conservation organizations, including Nature Kenya to launch a campaign to push the government to ban this deadly chemical. They support of this campaign from the Naivasha Member of Parliament, Hon. Mututho is welcome. His push for the hearing of his proposal for a total ban has been postponed twice already.

On 18 March 2009 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that ”dietary, worker, and ecological risks are unacceptable for all uses of carbofuran” and hence cancelled all tolerances for carbofuran in in food. On 11 May, they announced the total ban on these tolerances. In December 2008, the EU also effectively banned carbofurans. Canada is expected to follow suit in the near future.

American scientists concluded, in as far back as the late nineties, that there is no foreseable way that carbofurans can be used on crops without killing birds. The EPA also concuded that ‘all products containing carbofuran generally cause unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment and do not meet safety standards’

The Furadan problem in Kenya is therefore not only a wildlife issue but also a human health issue. A researcher, Martin Odino, who’s been monitoring Furadan use in Bunyala Rice Scheme in western Kenya reports that birds are deliberately poisoned and sold in the local market as human food.

A study on the effect of pesticide-fishing on dragonflies on Lake Victoria by a Kenyan PhD candidate at Harvard University, Dino J Martins, has also revealed that Furadan is being used widely to fish in the lake. Martin reports that HIV/AIDS orphans from the lakeside are allowed to collect the immature fish bycatch for their food thereby exposing them to this health risk.

Cases of inadequate monitoring of health risks in Kenya are not unusual and Martin Odino believes that it is just a matter of time before human deaths are reported.

WildlifeDirect has collected a wealth of background information. Anyone who needs to support Hon. Mututho on his call for the ban either by giving this issue media prescence or otherwise can get the information from us. We believe that when there is concerted effort from all those who care, Kenya’s parliament and government will be inclined to at least listen to one of their own - Hon. John Mututho.

Tags: birds, FMC, furadan, Kenya, Lions, Masai Mara, Parliament, poisoning, richard leakey, vultures, wildlife

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Category: Poisoning wildlife | Date: Apr 16 2009 | By: admin

What a week of ups and downs! We were so pleased when FMC announced the withdrawal of Furadan from Kenya, and welcomed the opportunity to meet a team from FMC here in Nairobi. All our colleagues came, with stacks of evidence of the damage that Furadan is causing to our lions, vultures, waterbirds and fish. We were sooo hopeful…like naive fools. Of course FMC are not really interested in wildlife per se, and we’ve been warned that their local distributor won’t give up without a fight over their deadly product. The scariest thing we heard from FMC was that they “will reintroduce Furadan once the right conditions are in place” course they wouldn’t divulge what those were.

Most of us in the meeting (represented by WWF, Nature Kenya, various bird groups, Living with Lions and others) felt that our concerns were not really being acknowledged, at least the FMC officials were not able to officially accept that their product was devastating Kenyan wildlife. We were told that the Government chemist who has analysed all our samples did not have the correct testing kit and were therefore producing false positives. The advice to us, look for another source of poison. This didn’t jive well with all the other evidence we have, eg. people admitting to using Furadan, purple grains on carcasses baited for lions, purple grains on snails for the bird hunting in Bunyala….How much more obvious does it have to be??? FMC were just as adamant that Furadan is just a name used to define any pesticide. AAARrrrrrrggghhhh it is so frustrating.

The other problem is that the government chemist charges 20$ for each sample while the other organization KEPHIS charges nearly 100$ per sample. We just don’t have the resources to analyse samples that are still in the freezer!

The meeting was fairly polite but I personally didn’t feel as if we made much headway, FMC maintain that there is no credible evidence that their product is killing Kenyan wildlife, but they do admit that there is potential and that they have withdrawn the product as a precaution. They also expressed many valid points about the alternatives, the black market and competitors flooding the market, issues we chewed on for a while.

We asked many questions – but I especially loved this cheeky one   “If you are an ethical company, why not just stop producing Furadan altogether”. Ouch. I don’t recall the answer.

FMC have a series of other meetings with the government, obviously they are more concerned about the authorities and we totally understand this. We just feel that it’s equally important that consumers and citizens have the right to information, opinions and a place on the negotiating table. Sadly, many people fear the response from the authorities - I don’t for a minute deny that our ‘officials’ and ‘leaders’ can be heavy handed. In general once elected our Kenyan leaders forgot (or perhaps never learned) what being a civil servant  is all about, Servant is the key word.

The truth is that while Furadan is misused for poisoning wildlife, even when it’s used for agriculture, it is not used safely in Kenya anyway - people do not use protective gear when applying this deadly pesticide.

KWS who admit that our lions and other predators are in trouble, are not really coming out strongly about the risks to our lions posed by Furadan. Meanwhile the Pesticide Control Products Board (PCPB have a statement that sounds like their interest is in protecting products not people or the environment.
Thankfully the public are listening though and we want to thank all of you who have written in support or donated towards our work to end the poisoning of wildlife in Africa.

What I can’t get my head around is how our government can defend the use of a chemical that is banned in Europe and for which the US EPA has found there is no safe way to use it in a country of educated people who also have excellent enforcement.  In Kenya the people who use Furadan don’t even know how to read the label and none of them use any form of protective gear. That alone should make the officials question whether it’s safe for human use.

There are rumours going around that thanks to all the negative publicity (especially the decline of lions), there is support for a Furadan ban in certain quarters of our government, so fingers crossed, perhaps we’ve reached someone who actually does care and is willing to do something about it! Our challenge will be to effect a ban on the actual chemicals not just the trade names - Carbofurans.

Keep reading right here, we’ll updated you here and on the stop wildlife poisoning blog.

Tags: carbofuran, furadan, poison prevention, poisoning, richard leakey, stop poisoning wildlife, wildlife, WildlifeDriect

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