Speaking during a press conference yesterday, Dr. Senyatso said the 'unsettling statistic' is due to threats such as habitat loss or degradation, inconsiderate farming practices and poaching. He said even though most of these threats have not been quantified in Botswana, it is well known that they exist. "For example, it is common practice for a farmer who has lost animals to predators such as lions and jackals to poison the remains so as to kill such predators.
But more often than not, it will be the non-targeted species, such as vultures and eagles which get to the remains first, and are then unintentionally poisoned," he asserted. Furthermore, BirdLife Botswana has come to discover that the recent increases in poaching incidences of large herbivores such as elephants and rhino, do not impact on those species only. He argues that this is because some poachers lace the carcasses with poison, so that the scavenging vultures get killed as soon as they settle at a dead elephant. The poachers do this to ensure that vultures do not circle over the carcass, alerting security personnel to the poacher's presence. "This barbaric action could soon wipe out our vultures as large numbers are killed at a single event. The worst case we know is when about 200 vultures died in a single poisoning event in Kwando mid 2012," he said.He continued to say that Botswana has approximately 30 bird species that qualify as endangered or vulnerable on the IUCN Red List owing to their very small and declining population.
