By Keith L. Bildstein, Ph.D.
Sarkis Acopian Director of Conservation Science
3 October 2013
As readers of this blog know all too well, Africa’s vultures are in trouble … big trouble. Nine of 11 species are “Red Listed” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, either as Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, or Critically Endangered, and many regional populations face the immediate threat of extirpation. Hooded Vultures, whose movement ecology Hawk Mountain decided to study in detail in 2012 are no exception (the species is now considered Endangered globally), and many populations in both East Africa and South Africa appear to be in steep decline.
With critical support from the Wallace Research Foundation and North Star Science and Technology, Hawk Mountain and its colleagues in Africa are in the process of placing satellite tracking devices on individual Hooded Vultures in many parts of its African range. Indeed, if all goes according to plan, two or more tracking devices will be placed on Hooded Vultures in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa later this autumn.
Earlier this week my colleagues and I placed four units on Hooded Vultures (three juveniles and one adult) in The Gambia, a small West African nation surrounded on all sides except for its Atlantic Coast by Senegal. The work went extremely well and what I learned during my short visit to this African nation has lifted my spirits considerably.
Clive Barlow, an intrepid Gambian colleague and new friend, has been watching Hooded Vultures for decades in The Gambia, and his willingness to partner with Hawk Mountain allowed me and raptor specialists Dr. Marc Bechard of Boise State University and Dr. Corinne Kendall of Columbia University to conduct a series of road surveys in The Gambia, as well as catch and tag four individuals for satellite tracking. Clive who has worked in The Gambia as an ornithologist for 30 years, co-wrote the book on Gambian birds with Dr. Tim Wacher ZSL UK (Barlow, et al. 1997. A field guide to Birds of The Gambia and Senegal), and l laid the ground work perfectly.
Our first day on the ground included meeting our counterparts inthe Gambia Department of Parks and Wildlife Management, including its director Mr. Momodou L. Kassama, and explaining how we intended to proceed with our work and discussing the details of our permit. The second day included baiting a trap site that Clive had been “pre-baiting” for weeks and sitting back and waiting for the vultures to arrive.
And arrive they did.
We placed the bait–a recently killed domestic chicken–out and set the trap at 9:30 a.m. Within two hours our first birds (two adults and a juvenile) dropped down and within a minute, we had trapped our first two Hooded Vultures: an adult we named Makasutu after the privately protected forest we had caught it in, and a juvenile named Mandina-Gambia, after the Mandina Lodge, the ecotourist facilty we used as base camp. In addition to placing tracking units on the birds, we collected a small amount of blood from each of them for sexing and eventual genetic analysis, weighed them, and released them back into the wild in short order. It is unusual to trap two birds simultaneously so we were confident about our great start. The next day we caught and tagged another juvenile in the Department of Parks and Wildlife Management’s Abuko Nature Reserve about 20 kilometers away, and named it Abuko in honor of the reserve. We also conducted the first of three roadside counts along a 24-kilometer route during which we saw an astounding (at least to us) 654 Hooded Vultures. Two days later we caught a second juvenile at Abuko and named it Tan Hoodie … “Tan” meaning “vulture” in the local Wolof language. Two additional road surveys later in the week suggested that in western-most Gambia, at least, populations of approximately 20 birds per square kilometer were the norm, which is far more than any of us had anticipated. Indeed by comparison, I had only a few dozen hoodies during five weeks of work in the Masai Mara region of southern Kenya in 2011 and 2012.Why the birds are doing so well in The Gambia remains something of a mystery, but studying the movements of these birds, and comparing them with those of birds in decline populations elsewhere promises to be an important first step in understanding the species ecology in different parts of it range, which, in turn, should help us better assess where the threats to this species lay, and how we might better design effective strategies for their survival.
Unfortunately, one week in the Gambia is but a tiny step in the right direction. Additional work, including satellite tagging many more birds is needed. The task will not be easy but for the rationale for doing it is plain. If we don’t learn more about this species ecology and behavior, and we don’t learn it quickly, we may lose ecologically functional populations of this the most widespread of all African vultures.More field work will require more funding, of course. But my trip to a haven for Hooded Vultures has only served to rejuvenate my enthusiasm for this important project. The loss of ecologically significant populations of vultures in southern Asia has brought with it dramatic increases in scavenging feral dogs, which, in turn, has resulted in rabies in humans skyrocketing in many places. We simply can’t afford to let that happen in Africa, the center of Old World Vulture diversity.Hawk Mountain plans to be in this good fight for the duration. If you want to help Hawk Mountain in this truly worthwhile effort, please contact me.
For information about how you can help, contact: mailto://bildstein@hawkmtn.orgor 570-943-3411 x108.
Acknowledgements: Mawdo Jallow & Lamin Sanyang (DPWM) , Lawrence Williams , Linda English & staff Mandina Lodges @ Makasutu, Dr Tony Fulford & Dave Montrieul (road surveys & photographs)
Leave a comment