Let's step up efforts to save Africa's vultures from extinction

Vultures act as nature’s clean-up crew, removing rotten carcasses from our environment. [Courtesy]

On the first Saturday of September every year, the world celebrates the International Vulture Awareness Day to raise awareness about the plight of vultures. A less oft highlighted decline, perhaps Africa’s best-kept biodiversity loss secret is the catastrophic decline of the continent’s vulture populations over the last 50 years. With declines of up to 97 per cent in some species, African vultures are faced with the same predicament as the dodo 400 years ago – extinction, despite the vital role that they play in the environment.

These majestic birds act as nature’s clean-up crew, removing rotten carcasses from our environment thanks to their unique scavenging capabilities. Nature abhors a vacuum and the deficit of these important scavengers in the ecosystem, destabilises the ecological equilibrium, with serious social and economic impacts. This was witnessed in Asia in the 1990s where vulture populations crashed by up to 99 per cent after feeding on cattle carcasses containing diclofenac - a veterinary drug toxic to vultures.