Action plan to save West African vultures targets threat from belief-based use (original) (raw)

Conservation organizations and international bodies have launched a 20-year action plan to save vultures in West Africa, specifically targeting the threat of belief-based use. The West African Vulture Conservation Action Plan (WAVCAP) spans 16 countries, with the aim to bring trade of the scavengers, identified as the primary driver of a rapid decline, to a halt.

Raptors and vultures are in decline across the whole continent due to habitat loss, electrocution, loss of food sources, intentional and unintentional poisoning, human-wildlife conflict, and more. A paper published earlier this year underlined a precipitous collapse in vulture numbers, finding that most vulture species are increasingly holed up in protected areas.

The decline is particularly severe in West Africa, says study co-author Umberto Gallo-Orsi, who coordinates raptor conservation for the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). In 2020, more than 2,000 critically endangered hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus) were found poisoned at several sites in Guinea-Bissau over a two-week period.

“Because birds were found without their heads and other parts, it is obvious that the reason behind the incident was the trade, and probably international trade, of vulture parts for belief-based use,” Gallo-Orsi says. The mass killings prompted conservationists to investigate the threat and laid the groundwork for the multiyear action plan for West Africa to save dwindling vulture populations, he adds.

“Belief-based use” is a catchall term that includes demand for a wide range of traditional medicine practices, “fetish” beliefs, and cultural practices.

Raptor experts have long been aware of the hunting of vultures for this reason, but had not considered it a primary cause of their plummeting numbers across West Africa.

Hooded and white-headed vultures in Ghana. Across West Africa, scientific knowledge of vulture populations is incomplete, but a study published earlier this year documented the presence of these species in Mole National Park. Image courtesy of Olivier Boissier.

Driving local extinctions

In Nigeria, vulture populations have crashed to the extent that conservationists believe there are only a handful of viable populations left in the country, according to Stella Egbe, senior conservation manager with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

“The most prevalent threat that has been recorded is the demand for vultures for belief-based use,” she says. “Most of the traditional medicine markets across the country have either live vulture specimens, dead vultures or parts in their stores for sale.”

A paper published earlier this year predicts that critically endangered hooded vultures will disappear from Benin within two decades. The scavengers have already nearly disappeared from the northern part of the country, says Clément Daboné, a lecturer and researcher in biology and animal ecology at the University Centre of Tenkodogo in Burkina Faso, who led the study.

“We found that the primary reason for the decline is the use of vulture parts in traditional medicine. We noted that vulture parts are available in the markets and sought after,” Daboné says, adding that a lack of animal carcasses for vultures to feed on is another driver of their decline in the area.

“While this study is focused on Benin, at the same time it also describes the situation that’s unfolding across West Africa in general,” Daboné says.

Hooded vultures are only one of several vulture species facing rapid decline in the subregion. Rüppell’s vulture (Gyps rueppelli) , the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), the lappet-faced vulture (Torgos tracheliotos), white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus), and the white-headed vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) are all similarly imperiled.

A critically endangered white-backed vulture. Conservationists have launched a multiyear action plan to protect vultures in West Africa by targeting the threat from “belief-based use.” Image courtesy of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation.

A regional problem

When conservationists developed a global vulture action plan in 2017, demand and trade for belief-based use wasn’t considered a major threat in the West African region. Since then, high-profile mass killings and further research, such as market surveys, have pushed the issue higher up on the agenda.

The most recent action plan is underpinned by an analysis conducted in 2022 by the Conservation Planning Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. The group looked at 24 peer-reviewed publications and convened a pair of meetings of 10 vulture experts based in Africa and the U.K. to conclude that direct persecution, with belief-based use at the fore, is the principal threat. Incidents of intentional poisoning were noted in Chad, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Cabo Verde.

“The bigger issue about the trade is that it’s also transboundary,” says Justus Deikumah, a conservation biologist with University of Cape Coast in Ghana and West Africa representative for the IUCN Vulture Specialist Group. Items such as feathers, legs, heads, eggs and whole vultures are commonly identified in markets across the region, he says.

Major questions remain, Deikumah says. “The trade is very big, but till now we do not have a scientific study that investigates the supply chain. Who brings the vulture parts? How are they acquired? Where do they come from? Are they aware about laws prohibiting them from catching a vulture? What is their understanding of the conservation status of vultures?”

He adds that while there are population surveys of vultures in individual countries, no one has conducted a complete population assessment of all vulture species. “We do need to do a population viability study to ensure that the populations in each country are viable and can rejuvenate, even if we stop the trade.”

Biologist Justus Deikumah describes vultures as “ecosystem cleaning crews”. Their scavenging cleanses landscapes of carcasses and pathogens. Their ongoing decline in West Africa and elsewhere raises concerns about the transmission of diseases. Image courtesy of Clément Daboné.

Dead hooded vultures for sale: numerous mass killing incidents and the findings of market surveys have placed ending belief-based trade in vulture parts at the centre of the new vulture action plan for West Africa. Image courtesy Kobina Daniels.

From plan to action

Conservationists and other stakeholders from civil society organizations and academia have tailored the new action plan to target the trade.

The strategy’s key pillars include strengthening and applying existing conservation laws, raising awareness of vultures’ protected status and ecological value, and reducing demand for parts. It also calls for community-based programs that enable local people to monitor populations and create safe zones, and highlights the need for further research on vulture populations across the region.

“We definitely need much more engagement from local government and NGOs to address this,” Gallo-Orsi says. “We also need to remember that a lot of raptors and migratory birds from Europe come to West Africa in the winter, so we also need international commitments.”

Identifying alternatives to the use of vultures in traditional medicine is also key. On this front, the Nigerian Conservation Foundation is moving forward with a plant-based alternative for vulture parts; normalizing its use could prove effective in reducing demand, say experts such as Egbe.

Fagimba Camara, head of research at the West African Bird Study Association, says he welcomes the formulation of a tailored action plan for West Africa. But he and others say it will be a challenge to build the conservation capacity and resources to implement it.

“We need resource mobilization, information sharing, and awareness creation [so that] West African populations know about these species and their importance to discredit this belief-based use,” Camara says. “What happened in Guinea-Bissau could happen in the Gambia.”

Conservationists say they’re hopeful that the action plan can lay a foundation for regional collaboration. “It’s true that the situation in West Africa is precarious but we have hope because in certain countries we still have good populations that could allow a recovery,” Daboné says. “That’s why we have to continue research and we have to continue to take conservation action to restore populations across the region.”

“By 2029, we hope we will be able to see a decline in belief-based use in the region,” Gallo-Orsi says. The longer-term goal is to achieve population recovery to “sustainable levels” by 2043.

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Citations:

Ogada, D., Shaw, P., Beyers, R. L., Buij, R., Murn, C., Thiollay, J. M., … Sinclair, A. R. (2015). Another continental vulture crisis: Africa’s vultures collapsing toward extinction. Conservation Letters, 9(2), 89-97. doi:10.1111/conl.12182

Shaw, P., Ogada, D., Dunn, L., Buij, R., Amar, A., Garbett, R., … Thomsett, S. (2024). African savanna raptors show evidence of widespread population collapse and a growing dependence on protected areas. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 8(1), 45-56. doi:10.1038/s41559-023-02236-0

Williams, M. M., Ottosson, U., Tende, T., & Deikumah, J. P. (2021). Traditional belief systems and trade in vulture parts are leading to the eradication of vultures in Nigeria: An ethno-ornithological study of north-central Nigeria. Ostrich, 92(3), 194-202. doi:10.2989/00306525.2021.1929534

Daboné, C., Adjakpa, J. B., Dansi, M. F., Thompson, L. J., Dissou, F. E., & Weesie, P. D. (2024). Hooded vultures Necrosyrtes monachus are at risk of extinction in Benin: A result of poaching for belief‐based use and decreasing food availability. Ecology and Evolution, 14(4). doi:10.1002/ece3.11184

Banner Image: White-headed vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) at Mole National Park, Ghana. Image by Nik Borrow via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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