Baraza

Category: Poisoning wildlife, wildlifedirect | Date: Nov 16 2009 | By: paula

After WildlifeDirect spoke to the father of 3 year old Kimutai last week there has been a flurry of media regarding this case. National Geographic also interviewed the childs father and the manufacturers of Furadan, FMC claim to be conducting their own investigations . This is not the first time that a human being has died from ingesting  deadly amounts of carbofuran, however it is the first time that it has gained media attention and a response from FMC in Kenya.

No reporting or under reporting of pesticide poisoning suggest this is probably not an isolated case

According to our sources in Uganda, a young man died in Uganda after ingesting Furadan last year. Although reported to FMC, we are told that FMC apparently have not responded to that incident. In the case of Kimutai the story reached the media because of a coincidence - the father knew a journalist who happened to be aware of the campaign to ban carbofuran in Kenya. Kimutai’s father told me that he fears that thousands of others may have been affected and have simply not reported the incidents. In rural Kenya autopsies are not conducted - and so the evidence trail ends.

A report compiled by the international crop research institute ICIPE states that 97.5% of Kenyan green bean farmers use pesticides and all are purchased in AgroVet stores.  The ICIPE report also claims that

“A fairly high proportion (about 21%) of farmers reported having visited clinics for treatment for maladies related to pesticide usage.” 

With such a high rates of maladies associated with pesticides one would expect the regulations to be stringently enforced. They are not. Kimutai was buried without an autopsy being conducted and according to his father, no record of the pesticide poisoning was forwarded to higher government offices. It seems that Kimutai represents an incident that never got recorded even as a statistic, even FMC cannot be sure that he died of Furadan poisoning. There were no tests, no documentation and apparently no death certificate. We agree with his father believes that this lack of reporting may be concealing a serious problem in farmlands across Kenya.

What does the Furadan label actually communicate?

 I have been asking people to read the Furadan label and tell me what it means

Two people have told me that it is a pest killer  for any form of pest from insects to rats to lions - this they know from recognizing the packaging and from previous experience. Two people thought it was a dusting powder for dogs against ticks - indeed the packaging for tick powder is in an identical container and may explain why Maasai herdsmen are trying to use Furadan on sheep. At half the price it’s a simple economic decision.

One person thought it was for malaria - the yellow square with x in side it is apparently a symbol used on malaria medicine.

None of the 5 people asked thought it was a deadly toxin. They associate a skull and cross bones with that.  None of the people I interviewed could explain what the six symbols in yellow at the bottom meant. Before I share with you recordings of farmers trying to explain - please send me your thoughts - what do you think the 7 symbols in yellow boxes at the bottom of the label mean?

Status of Furadan Buy-sback in Kenya 

We can also confirm that while the availability of Furadan  in Kenya is down, it is by no means gone from the Agrovet outlets. I personally visited several Agrovets in and around Nairobi and can confirm that it cannot be found anywhere near the headquarters of Juanco, the Kenyan distributor. Most Agrovets said they thought it has been banned by the government, however they admitted that it could be found in certain Nairobi stores, in major seed outlets and in up country Agrovets.

We have just received a report that it is available in Eldoret, a major agricultural town in central Kenya.  WildlifeDirect has been collaborating with FMC on reporting the presence of Furadan in Kenya but we remain dismayed at the lack of information regarding how much Furadan has been bought back, from where, where it has been taken or how it will be disposed. We have had no response to a series of emails to FMC on these issues. Our greatest fear is that tons of the product may have simply been moved to  border towns just outside of Kenya where we know the Agrovet stores are fully stocked with the deadly pesticide.

Ban Carbofuran in Kenya and Africa to save people and wildlife 

WildlifeDirect and other conservation organizations in Africa are proud to be associated with National Geographics Derek Joubert who says “We need to use whatever networks we’ve got, whatever political power we’ve got, to impose on FMC to pull this product out of Africa—that’s the bottom line.”

Tags: Africa, carbofuran, conservation, death, farming, furadan, Kenya, Lion, Lions, National Geographic, pesticide poisoning, pesticides, wildlife, wildlife poisoning, wildlifedirect

2 responses so far

Category: Africa, Poisoning wildlife, big cats, poaching, wildlifedirect | Date: Nov 10 2009 | By: paula

Dear all,

After the death of a child in Kenya from ingesting Furadan, and with the US Environmental Protection Agency banning carbofuran in America, we feel that there is no justification for delaying banning it in Kenya.

Watch this video and share with your friends. Please support our campaign to save lions.

Thank you

Tags: FMC, furadan, Kenya, KWS, Lion, lion poisoning, Lions, Paula Kahumbu, richard leakey, Tanzania, wildlife poisoning, wildlifedirect, wildlifepoisoning

12 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 06 2009 | By: paula

We have just received this video tape of birds being collected from the rice scheme in Bunyala after being poisoned allegedly with Furadan. The Kenyan  government officials of the Pesticide Products Control Board  have confirmed that THEY WILL NOT INVESTIGATE ANY OF OUR REPORTS which they state they believe we have fabricated.

Please watch the video and let us know if you think we could fabricate this.

Carbofuran is the same pesticide that is believed to be the cause of the massive decline in Africa’s lions. It is also being used in fishing in Lake Victoria. Reports of these incidents can be found on our poisoning blog http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org 

Although pesticide fishing and catching of birds for human consumption represents a public health hazard, the PCPB will not investigate. We will continue to furnish the government and other with the evidence.

Hopefully it won’t take a human death for them to wake up.

Tags: carbofuran, FMC, furadan, Lions, pesticide poisoning, poisoning birds, wildlife poisoning

3 responses so far

Category: Kenya, Poisoning wildlife, WildlifeDirect news, conservation, furadan | Date: Jun 10 2009 | By: Maina

NAIROBI, Kenya - 10 June 2009. While Kenyans have decried the unprecedented killing of more than 75 lions by pastoralists using Furadan as was recently highlighted in the local and global media, Conservationists now say that the plight of wild birds, which are being poisoned in their thousands, has been overlooked.

The conservationists, who convened in Nairobi on 9 June 2009 at the invitation of the Nairobi-based NGO, WildlifeDirect, said that despite raising the alarm in April 2008, the Pest Control Products Board, which is charged with licensing of pesticides, has not responded. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) has however agreed to investigate the matter immediately.

Furadan, a carbofuran-based pesticide and nematicide is among the most lethal pesticides known today. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has already revoked all food tolerances due to the alarming mortality of birds it caused when used on crops. Furadan was banned earlier in the EU, and Canada is considering a total ban.

The most noticeable bird deaths in Kenya have been those of vultures. The KWS records show that 252 vultures have been confirmed dead due to Furadan since 1995. ‘This is just a tip of the iceberg’ said raptor expert Munir Virani of the Peregrine Fund. ‘We have already lost the Egyptian Vulture’, he adds.

Vultures, which consume almost 70% of all dead animals, are in real danger of going extinct. ‘In Laikipia District these days, I see carcases lying out in the sun and in plain view but without vultures feeding on them’ said Laurence Frank of Living with Lions, ‘the carcases can remain rotting out there for days’.

On 25 May 2009, 40 vultures were killed in the world-renowned Masai Mara National Reserve in an incident that also resulted in the death of an 8-month-old lion cub and several hyenas. Scores of other bird species are also dying in their thousands in Kenya’s irrigation schemes. KWS reports that birds such as Fulvous ducks, White-faced Tree Duck, Knob-billed duck, Egyptian Geese, Ibis, Egrets, Spoonbills, Back-winged stilts, Storks, and many raptors have been poisoned in quantities that they only describe as ‘pickup truck loads’.

A Kenyan researcher Martin Odino has documented that wetland birds are being poisoned in rice growing areas for human consumption.  Preliminary results from Odino’s ongoing survey show that large quantities of birds are being poisoned and sold as food. Dino Martins, a Harvard PhD candidate has also reported Furadan use in fishing on Lake Victoria. These situations expose humans to this deadly chemical.

Back in the mid-1990s widespread poisoning of ducks in the Mwea rice scheme in easern Kenya gave rise to protests by bird conservation groups were leading to the ban of furadan use in Rice. ‘We stopped using Furadan in Mwea in 1998 after we witnessed its residual effect and its high instances of abuse’, Raphael Wanjogu, the Principal Research Officer at the Mwea Irrigation Agricultural Development center, told WildlifeDirect. ‘We told our farmers to use Sumithion instead’. Despite this, Odino says that deliberate bird poisoning using Furadan is a daily occurrence.

In the US, millions of birds have been poisoned in areas where Furadan was used. Recently, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned all tolerances of carbofuran on food. Canada is also looking to outlaw the use of Furadan. ‘Canada reported 70-100 million birds being poisoned by carbofurans’, says Laurence Frank.

Due to lion poisoning, many Kenyan Members of Parliament (MP) supported Navasha MP, Honourable John Mututho’s call to ban Furadan when the issue was discussed in parliament on Tuesday, 2 June 2009. The Minister for Forestry and Wildlife said that Kenya was going to ban this lethal chemical. The question remains whether the government will ban it in time - before the wildlife of Kenya becomes extinct and human fatalities emerge.

The MPs also asked the government to sue FMC for compensation for lions killed with Furadan. Although the Minister was noncommittal on this issue, he said the ministry would assist individuals who have plans to do so.

Now conservationists are calling to call for a total ban on Furadan. ‘We are being bogged down to produce forensic evidence of Furadan poisoning, but we have sufficient confessions to show that carbofuran, and specifically Furadan, is responsible for this poisoning,’ says Darcy Ogada, a researcher with Nature Kenya.

‘Human consumption of Furadan-poisoned birds in Bunyala rice scheme represents a ticking time bomb’, said renowned Kenyan conservationist, Dr Richard Leakey, ‘let’s get Furadan banned before we start losing people.’

Tags: Africa, birds, conservation, furadan, Kenya, vultures, wildlife poisoning

2 responses so far

Category: furadan | Date: Jun 08 2009 | By: paula

We have just received the copy of the Hansard or official record of the discussion regarding a ban on carbofuran  in the Kenyan parliament last Tuesday which is available on the government website here (pgs 8 – 11).

We at WildlifeDirect are very happy to report that many Kenyan members of parliament were up in arms about the loss of wildlife to this pesticide. Some were so upset that they wanted the Minister for Wildlife to sue FMC for every lion killed at Ksh 10 million (about US $13,000) each.  The official record shows that at least 76 lions were poisoned with carbofuran between 2001 and 2009. We know that this is the tip of the iceberg as the data emanate from just one study in two of Kenya’s many districts.

I am repeating the table to show just how devastating Furadan has been to Kenyan wildlife in recent years because I’m still shocked by the numbers. And these probably represent a tiny proportion of the actual numbers of fatalities as most animals will have died un-detected and un-reported.

The number of animals that have died as a result of poisoning by carbofuran from normal use and abuse is astronomical as can be seen in this table – I can’t imagine how many individuals are represented by pick up truck loads of birds of various species. Probably hundreds if not thousands.

It is an enormous relief that the government has admitted the problem and the Minisiter for Wildlife has stated that Carbofuran will be banned. This ban will give our lions much needed breathing space.

The ban will set an important precedent, that wildlife in Kenya is valuable and should be cherished. That pesticides must not threaten our people nor our wildlife. With a ban in place the Kenyan government agencies and conservationists can launch an education and awareness campaign to respond to wildlife conflict concerns, and to agree on more environmentally friendly pest control systems in agriculture like Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and organic farming.

It also heightens ours state of alert towards the deaths of our wildlife. Kenyans will understand that deaths of wildlife that occur as a result of pesticides are not acceptable. Abuse of pesticides carries heavy penalties and is morally unacceptable.

But a Kenyan ban is not going to be enough.  So long as it is still legal to use carbofuran in Africa, Asia or South America, this pesticide will continue to kill wildlife, even in Kenya and USA – because wildlife, especially birds migrate.

We’ve come very long way on a shoestring budget thanks to the committed work of a number of volunteers. Our campaign is not over, we need help. We now aim to educate regional governments to these risk as we seek to eliminate carbofuran, a WWII pesticide. We seek support of the International organizations that supported the EPA’s decision to revoke carborfuran tolerances in USA. So long as carbofuran availability remains in the migratory corridors of American wildlife and birds, these species will not be safe.

Americans should know that FMC have publically stated that the carbofuran ban in USA will not affect production of Furadan in their Philadelphia plant - that means they plan to export the product (and the environmental problems that come with the use of carbofuran) to other countries. FMC have also announced their intention to object to the EPA decision in order to restore the use of carbofuran in USA. We must do everything we can to prevent this from happening.

Please help us to bring about the eradication of carbofuran in Kenya, Africa and the world by making a donation to support the campaign now, circulate this information widely on facebook, myspace, twitter digg, stumble, and all your other networks.

Thank you

Tags: carbofuran, FMC, furadan, KWS, Lion, Lions, Masai Mara, wildlife poisoning

2 responses so far