![]() Study co-author Alazar Daka Ruffo, from Addis Ababa University, has interviewed abattoir staff members to see how they feel about the vultures. ![]() ![]() So abattoirs are grateful for the scavengers, including critically endangered white-backed, Rüppell's and hooded vultures, that eagerly clean up the pile. "It can be pretty stinky and pretty gross, by any objective measure." unique sensory experience, Buechley says. After butchering animals in clean conditions, the workers move the remnants of the carcasses - hooves, organs and bones, for example, to separate compounds. But the loss of vultures, as we'll see, can lead to human costs.Īt the abattoirs of Ethiopia, vultures are welcome partners. Yes, there are other scavenger species that can take vultures' place at the carrion table. "We realized that vultures not only have the fewest species of any avian ecological guild, making them irreplaceable, but since that first analysis in 2004, they had gone downhill faster than any other group," Şekercioğlu says. In 2016, Şekercioğlu and Buechley re-analyzed the ecology of all bird species. "Despite the many challenges, he also decided to study the scavenger communities of the Addis Ababa abattoirs, to quantify the causes and consequences of vulture declines in the region." "Evan led this project brilliantly and expanded it to the other vulture species of Ethiopia and the Horn," Şekercioğlu says. He and Şekercioğlu began a project tracking Egyptian vultures in eastern Turkey and the Horn of Africa. Buechley brought extensive experience working with vultures and condors. In 2012, Şekercioğlu accepted Buechley as his first PhD student at the U. Çağan Şekercioğlu, associate professor in the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences, showed that vultures were the most threatened group of birds (called an ecological guild, when the group uses the same or related resources) in 2004 when he conducted the first known ecological analysis of all bird species while in graduate school. And with vultures producing relatively few chicks and taking a relatively long time to mature, it's harder for them to recover from population declines. They're susceptible to poisons in the carrion they eat, whether that's lead ammunition, the drug diclofenac, or poisons used against predatory animals. And a diversity of vultures is better - some species are specialized to tear away hides and skin while others, coming in last, literally gulp down the bones.īut vultures have been in trouble in recent decades. By eating carrion, they remove the carcasses and pass them through a highly acidic digestive system that wipes out disease-causing agents. But vultures are an efficient clean-up crew. Rotting carcasses can become hotbeds of disease, overrun by bacteria and insects. Worldwide, vultures are perfectly equipped to take care of the unpleasant remnants of death. ![]() The study is published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and is funded by the National Science Foundation, the University of Utah, HawkWatch International, The Peregrine Fund and the National Geographic Society. And what happens with that gap is a bit of an unanswered question, but that's where the problem lies." ![]() "Carrion consumption by vultures is declining, and increasing by most other scavengers, but that increase is not sufficient enough to make up for the loss of vultures." says Evan Buechley, a University of Utah graduate now with The Peregrine Fund, "So there's a gap there. But in the end, it's about the power of conservation to keep ecosystems, even urban ecosystems, in balance, benefitting the people who live there. This is a story about vultures, feral dogs, rabies - and piles of rotting animal carcasses. ![]()
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