Vultures tracked in bid to assess threat

Four African white-backed vultures have been fitted with GPS transmitters in a bid to discover more about the birds and the threats they face, conservationists said today.

The adventures of vultures Alpha, Amur, Acacia and Angus can be followed online from tomorrow after they were fitted with transmitter back packs at a game reserve in South Africa.

The number of white-backed vultures in the wild is declining, with the species facing a number of threats including poisoning – when bait has been laid out for other animals – and loss of habitat.

Vultures are also increasingly under threat from being harvested for traditional medicines, according to the Hawk Conservancy Trust.

The Trust has fitted the GPS transmitter packs onto four birds in a game reserve in the Northern Cape province of South Africa to track where they go.

This will help assess the threats they might be facing and formulate plans to protect the vultures.

The study forms part of a long-term research project with Birdlife South Africa and diamond giant De Beers, in which hundreds of vultures have been ringed with identification leg bands and wing tags.

Campbell Murn, chief scientific officer at the Hawk Conservancy Trust, said: “Although there is ring recovery and wing tag information that tells us how far vultures can travel, until we know where it is they are going and the distances they are covering in between times, we don’t know the threats and hazards they might be experiencing.

“Until we know this, we can’t start to form effective conservation plans to protect them.

“They might be travelling across the region, over country borders or possibly even the whole of the African subcontinent – we just don’t know.

“This is why the new information we’ll be securing is so important.”

Mark Anderson, executive director of Birdlife South Africa, said numbers of vultures were declining, although the Dronfield reserve where the research is based has a “fairly large, healthy population” of some 300 pairs.

“Although they are spread widely throughout Africa, their range in the south is definitely declining, mainly through changing land use and the destruction of nest sites.”

And he said: “This year we’ve attached units to four African white-backed vultures and we hope to attach more in the future.

“What we’ll be able to do now on a daily basis is know exactly where that bird is, which is fantastic.

“That’s what we need to know, exactly where that bird is going to forage.”

:: The vultures’ travels can be followed online by clicking on to the new webpage at www.hawkconservancy.org from December 4.