In July this year, conservationists from North Carolina Zoo in the U.S. and the Grumeti Fund in Tanzania went searching for a white-backed vulture in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park that had been tagged a few weeks earlier. Tracking data suggested the bird had died. The team traveled off-road to the southwestern edge of the park, accompanied by rangers from the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA). Upon arriving at the bird’s location, they came across a gruesome scene: 108 vultures had been sorted into rows, missing their heads and feet.
For the third time in 16 months, endangered vultures in the Serengeti had been poisoned, their missing body parts likely destined for the black market.
It wasn’t the first time they’d seen something like this. A few months earlier, 109 dead vultures were found close to the same site, and nearly 200 more in February 2023.
Together, these three incidents have claimed the lives of around 400 vultures — a “huge” number for the slow-breeding birds.
“These poisonings were very targeted to kill vultures, and they had [taken] every single head,” says Corinne Kendall, curator of conservation and research at North Carolina Zoo, which leads a vulture conservation project in Tanzania.
Kendall, who was part of the team that found the scene in July, tells Mongabay that belief-based trade is almost certainly the primary driver behind these poaching incidents. Vulture parts are used in traditional medicine and other cultural practices in some parts of Tanzania.
She says it’s possible there have been more incidents that weren’t caught.
“If there aren’t tagged birds, and there aren’t people focused on this, you’re going to miss a lot of the poisonings happening,” Kendall says. “What we’re seeing in Serengeti seems to be very much belief-based trade driven. That seems to be the primary driver and so we are very concerned.”
Each poisoning followed a similar pattern: A large animal like a wildebeest or zebra was snared, killed and butchered as bait. The carcass was then poisoned with what park rangers believe is carbofuran, a highly toxic pesticide that’s banned in Tanzania and many other countries.
Arrests of poachers and traditional healers following the 2023 incident pointed toward an organized trade for vulture parts.
According to past research, Serengeti National Park is home to around 10,000 vultures of various species. The latest poisoning incident occurred in the midst of the birds’ breeding season.
“Those chicks might not survive with just one parent trying to raise them,” says Claire Bracebridge, program manager and researcher at North Carolina Zoo.
A worrying trend
Serengeti National Park is one of Africa’s most visited protected areas, best known for its huge herds of migrating wildebeest. The park draws hundreds of thousands of tourists hoping to glimpse Africa’s “Big Five” each year. Vultures may not be high on the must-see list, but they form an integral part of the Serengeti’s ecosystem.
The birds help cleanse the landscape of carcasses, removing harmful bacteria and viruses in the process. According to Kendall, their role may be even more important there. It’s estimated that vultures and other scavengers consume the vast majority of the carcasses left on the landscape, far more than predators such as lions and hyenas.
In some places, a decline in vulture populations has been linked to serious ecosystem and human health impacts. A study conducted in India, for example, linked the collapse of vulture populations to 500,000 human deaths caused by increases in viruses such as rabies.
Like elsewhere in Africa, vultures in Tanzania are highly threatened. Past research by Kendall and her team highlighted the threat of poisoning to vultures in southern Tanzania, including in protected areas. In Serengeti in the north, highly endangered species such as white-backed vultures (Gyps africanus), lappet-faced vultures (Torgos tracheliotos) and Rüppell’s vultures (Gyps rueppelli) have all been killed.
The black market wildlife trade isn’t the only threat the birds face from humans. Vultures have also been casualties of human-wildlife conflict when they consume poison-laced carcasses intended to kill predators. But Kendall says the evidence points to demand for their body parts as the culprit in the three cases.
Deus Sita, a Sukuma traditional healer, tells Mongabay that use of vulture parts for medicine is common among people who live near Serengeti.
“Demand is also increasing, primarily due to the Sukuma people, who are the main users of this medicine,” Sita says.
That demand is driven by a belief that concoctions made from the birds’ brain and feet can improve memory, help foresee the future and predict bad fortune. One vulture head — dried, ground up and mixed with other herbs — can treat up to 300 people, according to Sita, as only a small amount is used. The heads sell for relatively low prices, but profit margins are high for practitioners of these treatments.
“This practice is widespread across mainland Tanzania,” he says.
Similar beliefs are one of the primary causes of the decline in West Africa’s vulture populations.
In the past, Sita says he used vulture parts in his practice, but now he acts as a “champion” in a conservation program run by the NGO Nature Tanzania. He advocates for the protection of the birds and the use of viloto (Biophytum crassipes), a plant-based alternative to vulture parts. The organization has 56 traditional healers on board who raise awareness and report on vulture trade activities in their region.
“As an ambassador, I volunteer my time, often leading campaigns alongside Nature Tanzania staff because of my deep love and commitment to vulture conservation,” Sita says. “The message I have to people is that we must stop killing vultures because they help clean our natural environment.”
Tackling the trade
Controlling the belief-based trade is crucial to protecting vultures in Serengeti and elsewhere in Tanzania. But George Lohay, head scientist with the Grumeti Fund, a conservation NGO that works in Serengeti, tells Mongabay it won’t be easy.
“Poachers have easy access to various poisons, and the expansive size of protected areas, such as Serengeti National Park, makes detection challenging,” he says. “Additionally, the combination of poison with nonselective snares complicates law enforcement’s ability to identify poachers before they inflict harm.”
Kendall says conservationists need a better grasp of the trade and how it functions.
“Just like in West Africa, we need to understand the practices around this — what traditional healers are using the product, who is soliciting need for their use, and who is killing the birds and where,” she says. “Beyond that, more in-depth investigation into where the heads end up would be helpful. Are vulture heads from Serengeti being used elsewhere in Tanzania, elsewhere in Africa?”
Alpha Mfilinge, a conservation officer with Nature Tanzania, tells Mongabay that engaging with traditional healers like Sita and giving rangers tools to respond quickly to poisoning incidents has yielded “positive results.”
According to Mfilinge, no poisoning incidents have been recorded over the past six months in the Makao Wildlife Management Area, a reserve to the south of Serengeti where Nature Tanzania works.
“However, it is crucial to scale up these efforts, particularly in areas where there is evidence of vulture poisoning incidents,” Mfilinge says. “This should go hand in hand with strengthening law enforcement and the legal framework that supports vulture conservation.”
Mongabay contacted TANAPA, the national parks authority, for comment on the July incident but didn’t receive a response.
“To combat this threat, we need a collaborative approach between individuals, conservation organizations, government institutions, and communities,” Lohay says. “While it is crucial to increase patrol efforts in areas where poisoning has occurred, conducting extensive campaigns and raising community awareness, particularly among the Sukuma people, is equally important.”
A national vulture action plan is also under development by the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism and the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute. The plan will include a strategy to address the belief-based trade.
“This newly endorsed plan will provide the imperative and framework to scale-up activities,” says North Carolina Zoo’s Bracebridge, “and ensure collaborative and cohesive efforts to try to tackle the extent of the poisoning and stabilize the dwindling vulture populations.”
Citations:
Kendall, C. J., Rubenstein, D. I., Slater, P. L., & Monadjem, A. (2017). An assessment of tree availability as a possible cause of population declines in scavenging raptors. Journal of Avian Biology, 49(1). doi:10.1111/jav.01497
Frank, E., & Sudarshan, A. (2024). The social costs of keystone species collapse: Evidence from the decline of vultures in India. American Economic Review, 114(10), 3007-3040. doi:10.1257/aer.20230016
Peters, N. M., Kendall, C. J., Davies, J. G., Bracebridge, C., Nicholas, A., Mgumba, M. P., & Beale, C. M. (2023). Identifying priority locations to protect a wide-ranging endangered species. Biological Conservation, 277, 109828. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109828
Peters, N. M., Beale, C. M., Bracebridge, C., Mgumba, M. P., & Kendall, C. J. (2022). Combining models for animal tracking: Defining behavioural states to understand space use for conservation. Journal of Biogeography, 49(11), 2016-2027. doi:10.1111/jbi.14483
This article by Sean Mowbray was first published by Mongabay.com on 26 November 2024. Lead Image: Vulture Portrait, Serengeti Tanzania. Image by Adam Cohn via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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