Tomorrow, the first Saturday of September, is International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD). The aim of the day is, as the name suggests, to raise awareness of the plight of vulture species across the world. The majority of these are in big trouble, in serious danger of extinction. Regular readers of this blog will know that…
Tag: vultures
Guest Blog – An update on African and European Vultures by Chris Bowden
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 has…
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…
More on vultures
Comments Off on 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…
Vultures and diclofenac
The story about diclofenac and vulture declines is an amazing one. And it is developing a nasty new twist. Asian vultures crashed in numbers very rapidly. In the 1980s the Indian White-rumped Vulture was probably the commonest bird of prey in the world but its numbers (and those of other species) fell by around 99.9%…
Horse meat, Romania, vultures, Oscar Whisky, Owen Paterson and your taxes – all connected.
The connectedness of the world intrigues me. I like making connections between facts, people, events, ideas. I’m getting a bit tired of hearing about the ‘horse meat crisis’ (eg here, here, here, here, here) only because it certainly isn’t a crisis when safe delicious horse meat is incorporated alongside safe delicious cow meat in our…