Vulture mass death in Africa: For the medicine men, the head must

For the first Time, the masses die in Guinea-Bissau at the end of February. A worker discovered on the edge of a rice field more than 200 dead vulture. He informed the authorities of Bafatà, a Region in the centre of the country. Environmentalists from the organization for the conservation and development of wetlands in Guinea-Bissau and the staff of the bird force Bird-Life found in Bafatà more carcasses.

Thilo Thielke

Free Rapporteur for Africa, based in Cape town.

There were many: between the 4. 24.March came, the bird's friends on the Remains of 145 dead scavengers. They traveled also in other regions of the country, according to Gabú in the East and on the Bijagós archipelago, an island group in the Atlantic ocean. Almost anywhere you were able to find.

Meanwhile, the Bird-Life staff assume that in Guinea-Bissau, a small West African state with barely two million inhabitants, in the past half year, more than 2000 vultures were poisoned. According to vulture protection organization, The Vulture Conservation Foundation is the largest mass poisoning in the past ten years.

endangered species

It is a torment must have been full of death. Farmers from the area reports, the vultures would have looked for in their death struggle for water, and from their beaks the foam was gone. Some of the dead animals, the heads had been cut off. This suggests that their Remains are used by medical men for witchcraft. Whether they were killed by them, is unclear. Apparently had been scattered in some areas of the country strychnine on dumps, to poison stray dogs.

Almost always it was the dead vultures to endangered hooded vulture. These birds of prey are scientifically called Necrosyrtes monachus and with a body length of 60 to 70 centimeters and relatively small. At the edge of human settlements, they feed on garbage and Carrion, while on the coast also hunt for molluscs and fish.