At the least 150 critically-endangered vultures had been poisoned to demise in separate incidents in Botswana and South Africa, conservationists mentioned Friday, warning the killings pushed the birds nearer to extinction. Vulture poisoning will not be unusual in wildlife-rich southern Africa, the place they're focused by poachers as a result of they draw undesirable consideration to their unlawful actions.
The birds' heads are additionally utilized in conventional drugs, in accordance with wildlife teams.
Within the newest incidents, greater than 50 white-backed vultures had been discovered useless in Botswana's northern Chobe district on Friday, whereas about 100 extra had been found in South Africa's Kruger Nationwide Park on Thursday, in accordance with vulture conservation group Vulpro. The group mentioned the chook's heads, toes and organs had been eliminated.
"Vulture populations can not face up to these losses and the specter of extinction creeps ever nearer," the group mentioned in a Fb put up.
In each instances, the birds died after feeding from the carcass of a buffalo that appeared to have been laced with poison, mentioned Vulpro founder Kerri Wolter.
"What makes this much more catastrophic is that it is breeding season," Wolter advised AFP, explaining that chicks wouldn't survive with out their mother and father.
Park officers in South Africa mentioned they had been investigating the incident, including that among the carcasses appeared to have been harvested for his or her physique elements.
"Given the important standing of vultures globally, poisonings at this scale place the species at rising threat of extinction," Yolan Friedmann, the pinnacle of the Endangered Wildlife Belief conservation group, mentioned in a press release on the Kruger incident.
The white-backed vulture is listed on the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) "crimson checklist" of critically-endangered chook species.
One of many largest vulture deaths recorded in recent times in Botswana was in 2019, when 537 carcasses had been found within the Chobe sport reserve.