Guest Blog – The Asia vulture crisis, an update by Chris Bowden of RSPB

  Chris Bowden is RSPB’s Globally Threatened Species Officer, and Programme Manager of the consortium of ‘SAVE’ partners – Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Chris has worked for RSPB on various threatened species, (after his Woodlark and Nightjar research days on Thetford Forest), notably the Northern Bald Ibis based in Morocco (for which he still…

Would you like diclofenac with that ?

Tomorrow is vulture awareness day, and I see that today, staff at the RSPB HQ in Sandy are having a vulture themed lunch! ‘Pass on the diclofenac’ should be the message and that message is getting through after years of effort. I took the paper to the RSPB Board to get involved in vulture conservation…

Good news from Quito! Twice!

Governments across the world commit to stopping lead poisoning in migratory birds As described in my earlier blogs (here and here)  the inter-governmental Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) has been holding a Conference of the Parties (COP) in Quito, Ecuador this week. One of the Resolutions aimed at stopping the poisoning of migratory birds includes…

More on vultures

I’m grateful to the Vulture Conservation Foundation for an update on situation with diclofenac (a medical drug that is a bit like aspirin for you but more like cyanide for vultures feeding on animal carcasses which contain it). A review of the evidence for the impact of diclofenac on European vultures has been produced by…

Another unsatisfactory response from Defra

I met up with Sir John Randall MP earlier in the week for a chat about a range of issues – mostly about birds as Sir John is a keen birder. Yes, we covered Malta, Hen Harriers, the banning of driven grouse shooting and a range of other topics. We also talked about diclofenac use…