Title:

Vulture re-sightings Namibia

Abstract:

See a tagged vulture? Help our endangered species and please report the tag number, date and place! Vultures are well known for their unquestionable assistance to land managers and the ecology. They clean up carcasses, prevent the spread of disease and importantly by circling over a carcass site they alert land managers to livestock death. There are six scavenging vultures species in Namibia, all are now considered as endangered. The greatest threat to scavenging birds of prey is the misuse of chemical pesticides manufactured for plant pests. Pesticides have for decades been used illegally by farmers to kill mammalian predators, such as jackal and leopard, yet the most negative impact has been on scavenging bird populations. More recently poachers have been using pesticides to delay officers from finding their crime scenes. Vultures are not the only birds affected, scavenging eagle species, the Tawny Eagle, the Bateleur as well as migrant visitors such as Black Kite are also victims. Marking birds with leg-rings and wing-tags is a well documented conservation strategy, re-sighting the marked birds is obviously necessary to properly monitor populations. Reports of re-sightings provides information that can be used for understanding movements, pointing at problems or problem areas and for modeling of population sizes and other dynamics. A new mapping tool has been established to capture data of re-sightings of marked vultures. The map, called a crowd-map, is open to all citizens and encourages contributions to science from interested parties be they Namibians or touring visitors. To date, over 150 re-sightings from the past year have been entered onto the map. Re-sightings can be easily added to the crowd-map via: https://vulturesresightings.crowdmap.com or twitter #seevultures or report@vulturesnamibia.org. The crowd-map can also be found on the following websites: Vultures Namibia - www.vultures-namibia.com. NARREC - www.narrec.net. Keywords: resighting, re-sighting, tags, rings, wing-tags, citizen science, monitoring.

Item Type:
Website
Language:
en