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1ST DEC 2008
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Vulture numbers are cut to the bone.
Extinction fears for a scavenger vital to preserving ecosystems.
South Africa's national lottery is claiming an unlikely victim: vultures. Local people - convinced these birds' superb eyesight gives them the gift to see the future -are eating vulture meat to acquire the power of clairvoyance.
And they are not alone. In neighbouring Zimbabwe, voters fearful of supporting the losing side in recent elections ate vulture meat, mainly heads, talons, eyes and hearts, believing this would enable them to pick the winning party. Then there has been the rise of traditional medicines, for which vulture parts are highly valued, as well as soaring cases of poisoning and shootings by starving farmers in East and West Africa.
In addition, in south Asia over the past five years, the use of the painkiller diclofenac in cattle has wiped out three species of vulture and reduced the remaining two species to a few dozen pairs of breeding birds. The drug, it was discovered recently, destroys the birds' kidneys.
In short, the vulture - the ultimate scavenger, for ever associated with pitiless opportunism - has been sent spiralling towards extinction, say ornithologists. 'Something very, very bad is happening to the vulture,' said Guy Rondeau, of Afrique Nature International. 'There has been an almost total collapse in numbers in many parts of the world.'
The consequence of this dramatic decline is not merely an issue that should concern wildlife enthusiasts, add scientists. Vultures' ability to pinpoint corpses as they circle hundreds of feet in the air, combined with their power to strip carcasses clean of their flesh in minutes, mean they are vital in limiting the spread of diseases in livestock. With vultures around, corpses don't get a chance to rot and act as reservoirs for disease.
This problem has reached the level of a major ecological issue in Asia, as ornithologist Mark Anderson, based in South Africa, points out. 'In India the cow is sacred and cannot be eaten. So it was traditionally left to vultures to eat their corpses. Without vultures, packs of feral dogs have taken over.'
Provided by The Student Zone (United Kingdom)
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