2018 has been a productive year of vulture research and conservation activities for the Trust, so we’ve been looking back at some of the highlights of the year:
2018 has been a productive year of vulture research and conservation activities for the Trust, so we’ve been looking back at some of the highlights of the year:
We love vultures and a big part of our work is finding out more about them! Watch this video to see our Head of Conservation and Research, Dr Campbell Murn, conducting field work as part of a project on Hooded Vultures in Southern Africa. In this region, the Hooded Vulture is an elusive species. It mainly occurs in protected areas and places where the human population density is low and there has been little research conducted on Hooded Vultures in southern Africa, which has limited our understanding of its ecology.
We are extremely pleased to announce that Katie Harrington is the recipient of the first Marion Paviour Award. The purpose of this award is to further research into the conservation of birds of prey and support early-career researchers working towards this goal. We received a large number of high quality applications for the award, however Katie’s application impressed all the judges; her unique and interesting project, and obvious dedication made her stand out from the crowd.
Katie is a graduate student from Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California, USA and the Marion Paviour Award will help her to fund her Master’s thesis researching the Near-Threatened Striated Caracara (Phalcoboenus australis) in the Falkland Islands. For her research, Katie is using tail-mounted data loggers to collect high-resolution data of the caracara’s body movements which will allow her to calculate their daily activity budgets (how much time they are spending doing different activities during the day, for example how much time they spend moving or feeding), and use this to work out their daily energy use.
Katie is very grateful to the Hawk Conservancy Trust for the Marion Paviour Award which will help to fund her trip to the Falklands in February for an additional season of data collection, that will allow her to complete her graduate research and contribute information critical to the conservation management of this remarkable species.
Images: Katie Harrington
The Trust is currently hosting student Anika Preuss who is researching the effect of fitting data loggers to birds for the purpose of research.
Our Project Officer, Andre Botha, who is based in South Africa, found a White-backed Vulture dangerously entangled in a dead tree. Here is his account of what happened:
This is one of the questions we’re most frequently asked in relation to the Trust’s British Raptor Programme. It is often asked in the context of the potential for using radio-tracking or satellite-tagging as alternatives.
Calling all budding writers and poets!
Does the vulture crisis concern you? Does it stir up emotions when you think about vultures and the problems they face? Then, we want to hear from you.
At the Trust, we are fortunate to have many volunteers that work on a variety of different projects and tasks. One of our volunteers in the conservation and research team, Heather Howes, has been working on a project that measures how variations in small mammal populations affect breeding raptors.
New restrictions on toxic veterinary drugs in Pakistan
Vulture populations in South Asia have collapsed by over 95% since the mid-1990s. The primary cause of this catastrophic decline and an ongoing threat is the ingestion by vultures of livestock carcasses containing non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), principally diclofenac. Although diclofenac was banned from veterinary use in Pakistan, India and Nepal in 2006, other NSAIDs such as aceclofenac and ketoprofen still pose a major threat to critically endangered vultures.
We have now expanded our project in Pakistan to include research and conservation of the Red-headed and Egyptian Vultures, in addition to the Asian White-backed and Long-billed Vultures that we already work with.
