More than 20 years ago, at the start of the dry season in the parched rangelands of northern Namibia, a local farmer implicated Lappet-faced Vultures in the killing of his new-born dorper lambs.
He decided to exact presumed retribution and, although he’d been warned of its illegality, he laced two mammal carcasses with poison. The resultant carnage is forever testament to the chilling efficiency of poison as a des troyer in the bird world. Eighty-six Lappet-faced Vultures succumbed. The birds that did not perish immediately from the toxin were summarily shot where they crouched, incapacitated. The toll represented about 10 per cent of the total Namibian population of this species, eliminated at a single stroke. The current African population is estimated at some 8000 birds and the Usakos incident meant the loss of more than one per cent of the continent’s total – by one person, in one place, at one time.
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