Major update on UK charity defending endangered vulture against worrying elephant threat | World | News
UK raptor charity Hawk Conservancy Trust has raised £20,000 with the help of supporters, motivated by the plight of Endangered Lappet-Faced Vultures in South Africa, which are facing the destruction of their nesting grounds by elephants. With donations co-funded during the Big Give Organization’s World Uplift Week initiative, the Foundation can now begin the tree conservation project designed to slow the rapid population decline of Lappet-faced Vultures, also called Lappets.
In a recent detailed study, Hawk Conservancy Trust scientists working in the Kruger National Park found that, surprisingly, the most significant immediate threat to one of Africa’s largest vultures is the region’s elephants, despite significant dangers such as poisoning, land development and use in traditional indigenous medicine. The elephants do not directly harm the vultures, but for reasons not yet understood, they do knock down and destroy some flat-topped trees, such as Acacias, the Lappets’ favorite tree species for nesting.
Breeding opportunities are incredibly scarce, with only 30 suitable nesting trees identified in the park, and the problem is compounded because even when Lappets do find a tree, they usually only raise one chick per year.
“Lappets are losing numbers much faster than they can recover over the breeding cycle due to all the threats they face,” says Jamie McKaughan, Conservation and Research Coordinator at the Hawk Conservancy Trust. “When we discovered the connection to elephant behavior, our first instinct was to try to understand it better and somehow get around it, but with Lappets on the verge of becoming Critically Endangered, there is no time to do anything other than tackle this problem head on without harming the elephants.”
The foundation has devised a clever answer in the form of pyramid-like concrete blocks arranged in rings around the base of the trees. These prevent elephants from standing or stepping on them and mysteriously keep them away from trees they find worthy of destruction.
This is a clean and scalable solution. It does not affect the elephants’ food source because they do not eat any part of the tree and is relatively simple to install and maintain while allowing smaller animals, birds and insects to have free access to the trees.
Each block is relatively cheap to produce, but for a small specialist charity such as the Hawk Conservancy Trust, the requirement of around 2,000 blocks per tree and the additional costs of transport and local labor means spending £2,500 to protect each potential nesting site for Lappets.
With £20,000 raised during Earth Raising Week, the Trust is now able to protect eight trees and hopes the results will help capture hearts and minds to help raise the additional £60,000 it needs to defend the remaining 22 nesting trees.
“We are off to an incredible start thanks to our fantastic supporters and match funding from the Big Give Organisation,” Jamie said. “That’s eight more potential sites for Lappets to use for nesting, so the odds are definitely better than they were a week ago. We’ll use this renewed optimism to keep up the momentum to work as hard and fast as we can to spread the solution and raise awareness and funding so we can save more trees and solve this truly elephant-sized problem!”
The Hawk Conservancy Trust has a dedicated page on their website giving more information about Lappet-Faced Vultures, their ecological importance and the project in South Africa that will help protect them for the future. Anyone interested in learning more can visit: www.hawk-conservancy.org/protecting-and-conserving-lappet-faced-vulture-nests.
