Thursday, October 1, 2009

FURADAN KILLS OUR WILDLIFE -STOP IT NOW!!




There really is so little chance for our wildlife when the developed world are only chasing money and the developing world try to play catch up as fast as possible. simply not enough folk out there who care.
Neil Baker
----- Original Message -----
http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org/2009/03/06/detoxication-of-furadan


Thanks André,

I am copying this to conservation friends (Neil & Liz Baker), who live in Iringa.

Best regards,

Wayne


Hi

FYI below.
Regards
André Botha


Hi Linda ,

You said you will do a buyback of Furadan that i found , did you not? How is it disposed of safely. My contacts to do this are scared of it . A container was burned and the owners dog licked the ash and died horribly .This pic is only one shop in Tanzania .The sml container was $1.50. then 1/2 kg and 1 kg .

Most of the agro shops have your product in Kampala. Have pics .It is in KISORO as well . Next to the Gorillas . Student in Queen Elizabeth Pk used it to commit suicide .They say it was the most awfull sight .He was in such agony he tried to escape through a very small window .This info was from the head vet in QUEEN ELIZABETH PK . You can talk to the students and his parents about it .I can set that up if you like.

I have samples of a blue powder from the game dp in Uganda taken at the site of poisonings .Bad kill off of hyena and vultures.The game dp in Uganda has lots of info , pics and test results of lion poisoning . They cant afford expensive testing but they know when it is carbofuran poisoning as the guts are like jello. It is going to get to the GORILLAS. I just know it .They are only a few miles away and come into the agro fields to feed . I was with them in Uganda and DR CONGO ..

Very few raptor birds left in Uganda. Saw only 3 vultures in 2wks. Linda i dont know why you want to be linked to this awful stuff .

Let me know if i can help if you want to lead the way in conservation to pull the product . The rest may follow .We just cant loose any more wild life to poisoning .

Brian Gaisford

Brian



Brian,

Can you provide facts to me on what you found and saw in each country?

Regards,

Linda


Linda ,

I am just back from DR CONGO , UGANDA , TANZANIA and SA . Its scary what i found and saw .

Brian
From: "Jake Grieves-Cook"

Date: September 1, 2009 2:28:21 AM EDT

To: "'CEO'" <

Subject: Kenya lions
Copy of email to some tourism stakeholders who had forwarded me the report on declining lion population in Kenya.

Kind regards

Jake


Dear all
Please take a few minutes to read the message below!
There are 2 main reasons why lion numbers are declining in Kenya, as they are in so many other parts of Africa:
1. Human-wildlife conflict - spearing by herders and poisoning with FURADAN:

Lions are usually not very welcome in areas used for grazing livestock by pastoralists such as Maasai cattle herders. As a result lions are often speared when they go into these grazing areas and especially after they have killed livestock. The pesticide FURADAN is banned in many countries but is widely available in Kenya and is used by pastoralists to poison carcasses of livestock killed by predators. The predators return to the carcass and are killed by the poison. This can get into the food chain as any animal consuming the dead predators are also killed, from jackals to vultures.It is also poisoning people, see link below:

http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.org/2009/03/06/detoxication-of-furadan

For more on Furadan click on the link below:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=furadan+lions&aq=3&oq=furadan+&aqi=g10

As well as deliberate poisoning, some lions have been lost through accidental poisoning. One of the leading lodges in the Mara was using Furadan as a pesticide on its vegetable garden. Last year a hippo died after eating the vegetables sprayed with Furadan. Then a pride of lions died after eating the hippo. Then hyenas and vultures died after eating the lions. And so it went on.
2. Loss of habitat

Many wilderness areas which were formerly inhabited by herbivores and predators such as lions have been turned into farmland and are no longer available as wildlife habitat. In the outer Mara area there has been fragmentation of land with sub-division into small individually owned parcels.

See the map below of the Koiyaki and Ol Kinyei areas of the outer Mara divided into hundreds of 150 acre parcels:

the loss of habitat means that lions are no longer able to move freely around these areas as they did before and there is no longer availability of large numbers of wild herbivores which form their normal prey. So lion numbers decline.

SOLUTIONS
However there is a way that tourism can combat the decline of lions. This is by establishing wildlife conservancies on land owned by the local communities adjacent to parks. If the local landowners can earn a better economic return from their land from wildlife conservation than they can from cultivation or from keeping livestock then they will be ready to set up wildlife conservancies. They do not need to turn all their land into wildlife preserves but a community with over 150,000 acres, such as the former Maasai group ranches, could set aside 20% as wildlife conservancy and keep 80% for livestock grazing. I have been involved with the setting up of 3 community-owned wildlife conservancies over the last 12 years: Selenkay Conservancy in the Amboseli eco-system and Olare Orok and Ol Kinyei conservancies in the Mara.
SELENKAY CONSERVANCY OL KINYEI & OLARE OROK

We have had great success with our 3 conservancies and have been given very enthusiastic support by the local communities who own the land on which we have established the conservancies. Since the conservancies were set up, wildlife has increased substantially, in sharp contrast to the surrounding areas. We have 2 American researchers based at Selenkay who have collared a female lion and have been tracking her pride. Two lionesses there have both had cubs. In our 2 conservancies in the Mara we have several resident prides of lions and estimates are that over 30% of all the adult lions in the Mara eco-system are now resident in Olare Orok and Ol Kinyei. Our lion numbers are increasing.

However we have had a singular lack of support from some in the tourism industry who even tried to prevent us setting up the conservancies in the Mara by having a mis-guided total moratorium on all tourism development in the area and which failed to differentiate between low impact eco-camps located in community-owned conservancies and other inappropriate new lodge developments. We need to have a small eco-camp in each conservancy to generate income to cover the lease payments to the community and the management costs of the conservancy (rangers wages, patrols to guard the wildlife, maintaining game viewing tracks etc). However our camps are based on a very low-impact and low-density model, with 1 tent requiring 700 acres and a maximum size of 12 tents per camp. This is very different from some of the other camps and lodges mushrooming in the Mara.

Most people in the tourism sector both here and overseas do not understand the difference between a camp outside the park in its own wildlife conservancy of thousands of acres set aside as a habitat exclusively for wildlife, and the other camps outside the park which are on a small parcel of land of a few acres and which just go into the park to do game drives with no effort to get involved in conserving the wildlife habitat or generating an income for a large number of the small-scale local landowners.

Recently there have been a number of media reports on a big decline in wildlife in the outer Mara eco-system where there has been habitat loss to human settlements, intensive livestock rearing, fencing and cultivation of wheat, maize etc. However in contrast to this decline, within our wildlife conservancies at Olare Orok Conservancy and Ol Kinyei Conservancy there has been a BIG INCREASE in all wildlife both because of breeding (every female herbivore has a calf in the conservancies) and because of an influx of animals from adjacent areas where wildlife habitat is disappearing or where animals are being harassed by people.

You might be interested in watching 2 short TV clips of a couple of minutes each on the links below:

The first is a BBC clip about a recent report by researchers on declines in wildlife numbers in the Mara eco-system but which also highlighted the success of the community wildlife conservancies with which we are involved at Ol Kinyei and Olare Orok within the same Mara eco-system. All the wildlife footage was shot in our two conservancies.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8129816.stm

The second is a clip from local KTN TV which highlights the two conservancies:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PT7c8LPxHM

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