• Kenya is home to eight vulture species, with the white-backed vulture being the most common in Africa and is related to eagles, hawks, kites and buzzards.
• Others are white-headed, Rüppell’s, lappet-faced, hooded, Egyptian, bearded (Lammergeier) and palm-nut vultures.
Vultures have for a long time been misunderstood and their crucial role in the ecosystem ignored.
These scavengers, however, play a crucial role in devouring and disposing of carcasses and consequently preventing zoonotic disease outbreaks.
They are the hyenas of the bird world, raptors and birds of prey, with their favourite being the carrion. Some are ugly, some are beautiful, all despised.
Despite their positive role, many of these species are seriously endangered.
Kenya is home to eight vulture species, with the white-backed vulture being the most common in Africa and is related to eagles, hawks, kites and buzzards.
Others are white-headed, Rüppell’s, lappet-faced, hooded, Egyptian, bearded (Lammergeier) and palm-nut vultures.
Four species (White-backed, white-headed, Rüppell’s and hooded vultures) face extinction.
Retaliatory poisoning has been singled out for the devastating decline of their populations.
The poisoning usually occurs when livestock are attacked by predators such as lions, hyenas and leopards.
Without compensation in place, livestock farmers resort to lacing their dead livestock with easily accessible agro-chemicals to kill other big predators.
Vultures that scavenge on dead animals often succumb to the poison and hundreds can die as a result.
Habitat loss and degradation, illegal shooting, collisions with man-made structures and electrocution by power lines also kill them.
Scientists, however, are confident that tracking of the birds of prey could help provide solutions to the problems they face.
Nature Kenya’s vulture specialist Brian Otiego said vultures are, for instance, tracked for monitoring purposes.
“Tracking helps us to understand the movement ecology, their behaviour, where they go to find their food, where they go to nest and breed. Tracking also helps to understand the status of a bird,” he said.
Otiego said scientists will swing into action if the bird remains in one location for a long time.
“For instance, if the bird has been in one location for a long time, scientists will know if the bird is distressed, injured, or has died. As technology evolves, it gives scientists options to programme the device to tell when a bird is dead,” the vulture specialist said.
Otiego said when the bird is dead, some algorithms send signals back to the database scientists.
“This is something that is tested over time to know behaviour of the bird,” he said.
Otiego said if the bird is poisoned, scientists will respond and clear the scene before scavengers descend on it and other animals are poisoned.
“With that, we can respond and clear the scene as poison is quite lethal.”
He says the move avoids the spread of poison to other wildlife and that tracking of vultures also helps to understand the habitat range.
He said a bird can move from Kenya up to South Sudan and Chad.
“We also know the path that it follows as it goes to those places. We are able to tell where to focus on our effort when we are implementing conservation initiatives.”
Otiego said the movement patterns help them understand where developments are and how they are affecting the birds.
“For instance, we have the wind farms that are now becoming a clean energy source, but then when an environmental impact assessment is not done well, you will find that we erect wind turbines in the paths of these birds. Some of the birds are critically endangered,” he said.
Transmission lines also kill birds.
The vulture specialist said tracking helps while making decisions as the birds’ paths are known.
In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the scientists said the birds of prey and others are facing an imminent extinction crisis.
The report warns of declines among nearly 90 per cent of the 42 species examined and suggests that more than two-thirds may qualify as globally threatened.
Dr Phil Shaw of the University of St Andrews and Dr Darcy Ogada of the Peregrine Fund led the study.
It combines counts from road surveys conducted within four African regions at intervals of 20 to 40 years, yielding unprecedented insights into patterns of change in the abundance of savannah raptor species.
It shows that large raptor species have experienced significantly steeper declines than smaller species, particularly on unprotected land, where they are more vulnerable to killing and other human pressures.
Overall, raptors had declined more than twice as rapidly outside of national parks, reserves and other protected areas than they had within.
Dr Shaw said that “since the 1970s, extensive areas of forest and savannah have been converted into farmland, while other pressures affecting African raptors have likewise intensified."
"With the human population is projected to double in the next 35 years, the need to extend Africa’s protected area network and mitigate pressures in unprotected areas is now greater than ever," he said.
Dr Ogada said Africa is at a crossroads in terms of saving its magnificent birds of prey.
In many areas, these species have nearly disappeared.
“One of Africa’s most iconic raptors, the secretarybird, is on the brink of extinction. There’s no single threat imperilling these birds; it’s a combination of many human-caused ones; in other words, we are seeing deaths from a thousand cuts,” she said.
Many species suffering the steepest declines had suffered doubly, having also become much more dependent on protected areas over the course of the study.
The authors conclude that unless many of the threats currently facing African raptors are addressed effectively, large, charismatic eagle and vulture species are unlikely to persist over much of the continent’s unprotected land by the latter half of this century.
The study also highlights steep decline among raptors that are currently classified as being of ‘least concern’ in the global Red List of threatened species.
They include African endemics such as Wahlberg's Eagle, African hawk-eagle, long-crested eagle, African harrier-hawk, brown snake-eagle, as well as the dark chanting-goshawk.
All of these species have declined at rates suggesting they now may be globally threatened.
Several other familiar, widespread raptor species are now scarce or absent from unprotected land.
They include one of Africa’s most powerful raptors, the martial Eagle, as well as the gorgeous Bateleur.
Prof Ian Newton, a world-leading ornithologist, said the study is important as it draws attention to the massive decline in predatory birds that have occurred across much of Africa during recent decades.
“This was the continent over which, only 50 years ago, pristine populations of spectacular raptors were evident almost everywhere, bringing excitement and wonder to visitors from many parts of the world.”
Newton said the causes of the decline are many, from rampant habitat destruction to the growing use of poisons by farmers and poachers and expanding power line networks, all ultimately due to expansions in human numbers, livestock grazing, and other activities.
“Let us hope that more research can be done and, more importantly, that these birds can be protected over ever more areas, measures largely dependent on the education and goodwill of local people.”
Raptors of all sizes lead an increasingly perilous existence on Africa’s unprotected land, where suitable habitat, food supplies and breeding sites have been drastically reduced, and persecution from pastoralists, ivory poachers and farmers is now widespread.
Other significant threats include unintentional poisoning, electrocution on power poles and collisions with power lines and wind turbines, as well as killing for food and belief-based uses.