Volunteer Conservation & Environment in South Africa and Botswana – The African Vulture and Wildlife Initiative

Volunteer Conservation and Environment Work Experience Placements Overseas in South Africa and Botswana

Without vultures, you get many more hyenas. With more hyenas, you get fewer big cats. The lions kill but the hyenas eat the kill. The female cheetah leaves its young when she hunts and the hyenas are watching and waiting.

The role of vultures in the African ecosystem is fundamental. Without these carrion-feeders removing dead and rotting carcasses there would be a significant increase in flies and disease. But that’s only the beginning. If vultures were to disappear then other scavengers would come to the fore and upset the balance of the ecosystem. Hyenas would multiply and provide competition and direct threats to the big cats such as leopards and cheetahs. Hyenas are powerful animals; they don’t just eat carcasses; they prey directly on upon the young of big cats and can even bring down adults, especially of the smaller species like cheetahs and leopards. But the greatest problem the cats will face is losing their kills to the hyena packs. A solitary cat or even a small pride of lions cannot always defend their kills. In the end they would just die of starvation.

Our mission is to stop African vultures from going the same way as their Asian cousins. Vultures have become virtually extinct in Asia in the last ten years because of one veterinary drug, Diclofenac. The drug is used on cattle and it does not break down in a cow’s body, so it is still there she dies. Diclofenac therefore accumulates in the bodies of the vultures feeding on her carcass. This leads to the kidney failure and death of whole packs of vultures in less than a week.

In Africa, Diclofenac has now been introduced and cattle-farming is on the rise. The problem is not yet as serious as in Asia, but the trend towards cattle farming and the ready availability of Diclofenac indicates that we could be facing a similar disaster across the continent if action isn’t taken now. Some countries have already started implementing education programs asking for veterinary surgeons and pharmaceutical companies to recommend medicines that contain a harmless alternative, Meloxicam, but there is a lot of work still to be done. It makes this tragedy more poignant that there is a perfectly good alternative treatment for cattle and that the whole thing boils down to marketing by pharmaceutical companies.

Projects Abroad is part of an international campaign, including the RSPB and Bird Life Africa, designed to heighten awareness and to persuade farmers to avoid Diclofenac. We are setting up a monitoring programme at Legodimo to gather data on species, numbers, behaviour and diversity and we’re going into partnership with local veterinary practices to promote the safe use of drugs. We are producing literature to condemn Diclofenac and promote Meloxicam.

Projects Abroad and its volunteers are going to fight a tough campaign to save vultures in Africa and thus, we believe, to save the beauty and variety of African wildlife.