Another Continental Vulture Crisis: Africa's Vultures Collapsing toward Extinction

By D. Ogada, Phil Shaw, Rene L. Beyers, R. Buij, C. Murn, J. Thiollay, Colin M. Beale, R. Holdo, D. Pomeroy, Neil Baker and 5 more. 2016

383 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Vultures provide critical ecosystem services, yet populations of many species have collapsed worldwide. We present the first estimates of a 30‐year Pan‐African vulture decline, confirming that declines have occurred on a scale broadly comparable with those seen in Asia, where the ecological, economic, and human costs are already documented. Populations of eight species we assessed had declined by an average of 62%; seven had declined at a rate of 80% or more over three generations. Of these, at least six appear to qualify for uplisting to Critically Endangered. Africa's vultures are facing a range of specific threats, the most significant of which are poisoning and trade in traditional medicines, which together accounted for 90% of reported deaths. We recommend that national governments urgently enact and enforce legislation to strictly regulate the sale and use of pesticides and poisons, to eliminate the illegal trade in vulture body parts, as food or medicine, and to minimize mortality caused by power lines and wind turbines.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7ccdfc96ef1460c49b92049c1101ef31d43897b6

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In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Roles of Raptors in a Changing World: From Flagships to Providers of Key Ecosystem Services (2016, background): “…the number of studies has raised (see Markandya et al., 2008; Gangoso et al., 2013) partially due to the precipitous decline of vultures and other avian scavengers in many regions of the world and specially in Africa and Asia where they were formerly extremely abundant (Ogada et al., 2012, 2016).”
Vulture conservation: the case for urgent action (2019, background): “…had laced the carcass of a slain African elephant Loxodonta africana with large quantities of a toxic pesticide because circling vultures signal potential illicit activities to those who are combatting poaching: vultures are killed because they play the role of sentinels (Ogada et al. 2015).”
The avian scavenger crisis: Looming extinctions, trophic cascades, and loss of critical ecosystem functions (2016, background): “However, numerous types of poisons have been used throughout Africa, including Strychnine and synthetic organic pesticides.”