What a Whitley!

What a Whitley!

Recently on a local birdwalk with some neophytes my colleague guide and I knew that we had to find something big quick. Then as luck would have it in swept a turkey vulture and with great enthusiasm we began explaining all the marvelous things about it.

“Ugh! A Vulture!” was the response.

Well, that’s not what Princess Anne just said.

The annual Whitley Conservation Awards are widely considered the Oscars of Conservation. Presented each June they’re not just monetary awards for the persons being honored, but also operational funds for their continuing work.

This year Kenyan Munir Virani received a Whitley for his steadfast work in saving African vultures, and it was presented by none other than Princess Anne.

Munir deserves every ounce of praise, but I think it’s notable that Princess Anne offered to be the awarder of a Whitley that very specifically denounces the American chemical industry. Is this a Royal Retort?

First, a quick review of why you should fall in love with a vulture.

Things just dead rot. If not contained that rot spreads. Few living things won’t then be turned dead themselves. The exception is the vulture.

The vulture contains bacteria by digesting it. Most living things are incapable of digesting the cancerous bacteria in organic rot. Get rid of the vultures and you have a land of uncontrollable disease.

The dislike of vultures is universal among those who know little about them. They’re considered “dirty.” (And well they better be!) Such short-sighted opprobrium is particularly typical of our current age where anything complex is considered a conspiracy against goodness.

Munir’s life-long dedication to stemming the decline of Africa’s vultures extends to all sorts of efforts, especially the steadfast often laborious education of Kenya’s burgeoning modern farmers, who took to poisoning vultures as vermin without redemption.

But he also challenged head-on the American chemical industry which manufactures the poison most often used in killing vultures worldwide, Carbofuran.

This horrible chemical was not, of course, manufactured then marketed to kill birds, but as a crop pesticide. It’s so toxic that it’s banned here in the U.S. where it’s made, and was given a name change (Curater) by its creator, the FMC Corporation, to buffer its attacks.

Munir was fairly successful in getting both local Kenyan farmers to alter their use of the pesticide (as there are plenty others) and in petitioning the Kenyan government to ban it (although that remains in flux).

With Carbofuran curtailed Munir then discovered that farmers were buying another American chemical, Diclofenac, which does nothing to kill bugs and in fact requires a medical doctor’s prescription in the U.S. for purchase.

There could be no good use for this human pain killer except to kill birds, and that was precisely how its manufacturers were marketing it in Kenya, once Carbofuran was losing its traction.

Munir dug deep into all of this. He was not just a scientist, but an activist who revealed that the American corporations – mostly banned from selling their own products in their own country – were using Chinese retailers to get their drugs into the Kenyan market.

The depth of deceit and deception is another tunnel of evil direct from the USA in large part the result of our loosening regulations in celebration of capitalism’s freed market.

So Munir is not simply a conservationist. He’s a forensic master who revealed that the “Ugh!” in vulture recognition comes straight from America.

Thank you, Princess Anne. You may curtsy, now.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.