Guardians of the sky: saving SA’s vultures

As a field officer with the Endangered Wildlife Trust’s (EWT) Birds of Prey Programme (BoPP), Danielle du Toit works alongside nearly 100 farmers to make the landscape safer for vultures. 

Du Toit grew up on a livestock farm in the Camdeboo Conservancy near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape. After completing a diploma in Game Ranch Management, she returned home with a desire to contribute to conservation efforts behind the scenes.

During her studies, she met Kuda Maoneni, a falconer from Zimbabwe whose deep respect for raptors left a lasting impression on her. “He showed me just how incredible raptors are and he treated them with reverence and respect and I guess I learned from his example," she said. 

A local initiative led by neighbouring farmers and supported by the EWT aimed to reintroduce Cape Vultures to the Karoo, where they had once thrived. 

Here Du Toit was given the opportunity to join the project as an intern, responsible for building relationships with those working the land and encouraging practices that would make the region safer for vultures.

“Five years later, here I am, as a field officer for the BoPP team, still in the place I love, working (with) nearly 100 farmers to do all we can to ensure a safe space for vultures to utilise and (in hope) breed.”

She explains there are a variety of threats to vultures and birds of prey in the Karoo, as in the rest of the country and even globally, but all of them boil down to one factor: human impact.

"I think the best way I can describe it is like this: Birds do four things: they fly, they feed, they roost and they breed. In each of those actions is a human impact that could kill them. In flying, birds face the risk of colliding with powerlines or wind turbine blades; in feeding they risk ingesting food that is contaminated by pesticides, non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or even lead; when roosting they can land on a pylon that can electrocute them or their roost could be compromised by the destruction of their nests; and their breeding can be affected by either the killing of the parents of a chick in which case the chick will die because of starvation or through contamination of their food sources, it could hinder the ability to breed.” 

Earlier this year, eighty-four vultures were rescued by a joint team of SANParks rangers and EWT officials from a poisoning incident in the Kruger National Park. The mass poisoning involving hundreds of vultures, was the result of an elephant carcass laced with highly toxic agrochemical pesticides poison laid by poachers to harvest body parts for the illegal wildlife trade. A total of 116 vultures were found dead at the scene.  

Du Toit has also played a key role in the creation and implementation of Vulture Safe Zones across the region to make farms safer for vultures. This includes practical measures like securing farm dams to prevent accidental drownings. Beyond that, Du Toit works to identify and mitigate the various threats vultures face, addressing both the immediate risks and the underlying causes.

Launched in 2019, the Karoo Vulture Safe Zone conservation project covers 23 000 square kilometers. It was implemented in partnership with SANParks, the Mountain Zebra Camdeboo Protected Environment and SANParks Honorary Rangers. 

“Vulture conservation is important not only for biodiversity but because of the role that vultures play in the ecosystem. They are cleaners of carcasses, and by doing that which only they have so beautifully been made to do, they prevent the spread of disease, bacteria, pathogens… the list goes on,” Du Toit said. 

As a woman in conservation, Du Toit said she experienced gender bias early in her career before joining the EWT when a former superior dismissed her contributions simply because she was female. 

“Often as a woman in the field, we get downtrodden by how individuals treat us and see that as a reflection on ourselves and our capability. We make it a ‘me-problem’, but the truth is that the greatest challenge we need to overcome is not seeing ourselves, based on the opinion of few, as the victims of a system, but rather to have the confidence in ourselves, surrounding ourselves with a support system, and remember that conservation is not about how we feel, but how well we can protect the species we are employed to conserve.”

Cape Times