09 October, 2024
By Alexander Trifunovic
Darcy Ogada, Africa Program Director at The Peregrine Fund, holding a Hooded Vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus). This species has declined rapidly by an estimated 67% in the last 40 years, and it is listed by IUCN as Critically Endangered. Photo courtesy of Darcy Ogada.
How did you first become interested in birds?
DO: I was always interested in wildlife, but birds came up when I was doing a field practical in college. We were doing a cryptic coloration experiment with different color papers on bird feeders, and the diversity blew me away.
Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) in flight carrying a meadow vole. Photo by Alex Trifunovic.
2. What is your favorite bird or group of birds?
DO: Owls. I have a nice Snowy Owl story from when I was doing a two-year degree at the SUNY ESF Ranger School in upstate New York. We had a surveying class, and we learned the old-fashioned way. There is a measuring tape for road surveying called a chain, and to measure you drag it through the woods. On the other end there is a small, coiled leather strap, and I was dragging my chain through the woods and all of a sudden it stopped. I turned around and there was a Snowy Owl sitting on the leather strap, thinking it was a mouse.
Mackinder’s Eagle-Owl (Bubo capensis mackinderi) is a subspecies of the Cape Eagle-Owl found in the central Rift Valley of Africa. Photo by Darcy Ogada.
3. Can you briefly outline your career journey to get where you are now?
DO: School was long, and it took me nine years to finish university. I was teaching skiing, and I took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. That was the moment I knew I had to do something outdoors in nature. From there, I got more serious about finishing school. I was also in the U.S. Peace Corps in Niger in between my two- and four-year degrees which gave me experience in Africa. After my undergraduate degree, I got an opportunity to do my master’s research in Kenya through the University of Albany. I was supposed to be here for one year doing research on small mammals. Right before I came, there was a bad drought, so there weren’t many mice, and I switched my project to birds. And then one year turned into twenty-four! Sometime during that period, I did a PhD and postdoc here in Kenya, and then I started working for The Peregrine Fund in 2010.
Darcy and Paul searching for owl pellets on Mt. Kenya. Photo courtesy of Darcy Ogada.
4. Can you tell me about one or two projects you are particularly proud of?
DO: The first one is the project for my postdoc. I was a single mom with a young son, so it was pretty stressful. It was a project about disease transmission at carcasses with and without vultures. I almost quit, because I spent the first three months of the project without attracting vultures to my experimental carcasses. Finally, I tried something different with the camera, and it worked really well. Since Old World vultures find carcasses by sight, you can create a control by placing a carcass under a tree canopy where the vultures can’t find it. We found that the number of contacts between mammals at the carcass without vultures was three times higher, so there is more potential for disease transmission. It ended up being my most successful research project, and I’m really proud of it for both personal and professional reasons. Otherwise, it’s the paper we did on vulture declines across Africa. It was a landmark paper that got attention and created awareness for vultures in Africa, and it kickstarted a lot of funding and subsequent research by African students. Professionally that was a very satisfying paper.
A Black-backed Jackal feeds on a zebra carcass in Etosha National Park, Namibia while a White-backed Vulture (Gyps africanus) looks on. Ogada’s research on vulture absence at carcasses indicates a potential for increased disease spread between mammals. Photo by Yathin sk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
5. What is one of your favorite memories from your fieldwork?
DO: Probably when I was guided in the field by a honeyguide. I was in the field in a more remote area by myself, and this bird started yapping at me in a tree and flying out ahead of me. Eventually I realized what it was doing, and it took me right to a bunch of solar panels for an electric fence. There was a big bees’ nest along the side of it, and the bird took me right to it.
The Greater Honeyguide (Indicator indicator) has a unique habit of leading humans to beehives. The humans get honey, and the bird gains access to beeswax and larvae, a win-win. Photo by Dominic Sherony, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
6. What are some things you want people to know about vultures?
DO: First and foremost, they are really endangered. People say there are so many because there will be hundreds at a carcass. But that’s because they are social. According to the old timers, they used to be everywhere in Kenya in huge numbers. Relatively speaking, they have become quite rare, even inside protected areas. Also, most people think they’re disgusting, but they’re actually quite charismatic and interesting. If you get the chance to see them in their natural habitat, you’ll see how cool they are. They are also super clean, and vultures like to bathe daily.
Rüppell’s Vultures (Gyps ruepellii) in Kenya. Old World Vultures are closely related to eagles and hunt for carcasses based on sight instead of smell. Photo by Darcy Ogada.
7. Have you been able to pinpoint specific causes of vulture declines?
DO: Across the world, it is poisoning. In Africa, it is poison on carcasses aimed at carnivores that have killed people’s livestock. In Kenya, we don’t have as many of the big poisoning events, partially because vulture numbers are down, and partially because people know they will be arrested for it. In West Africa, there is a lot of intentional poisoning of vultures for belief-based use. Some are killed for traditional medicine, even though nothing on a vulture has been proven to have medicinal benefits. Also, it is well-known that vultures have good eyesight, so some people believe that the using the head of a vulture will let them see into the future and have an edge in gambling or business ventures.
Critically endangered Rüppell’s and White-backed Vultures. Photo by M. Odino.
8. What are your priorities for future research?
DO: Right now, we are doing a lot of work trying to mitigate electrocution, which focuses more on raptors like eagles and buzzards. We’ve started looking at declines of sit-and-wait raptors that perch on electrical poles. This is a prevalent issue globally, and we’ve started seeing huge declines in raptors as energy development expands in Kenya and other parts of the developing world. Another challenge is looking at this problem holistically and mitigating the electrocution of other animals, like primates, giraffes, and lizards which walk on the wires, walk into the wires, or try to gain heat from the transformers. Another issue is electric shock, which does not kill the animal at the scene. It usually causes tissue damage on the toes or wingtips, the damaged tissue falls off, and it ultimately results in the raptors starving to death. The lines also cause issues with collisions because of where birds look in flight, particularly with large birds like flamingos, bustards, and pelicans, but also smaller birds like sandgrouse and francolin that die on impact. So, there are a lot of challenges with the energy infrastructure.
The Martial Eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) is the largest species of eagle in Africa, and is extremely susceptible to electrocution on powerlines. Photo by Darcy Ogada.
9. What is your advice to young people entering the field of bird conservation and research?
DO: You have to be in it for the long haul, and you have to be in it because you love it. People get the perception that it is fun, and it is at the beginning, but the way to get conservation results is to be in it for the long-term. Changing people’s behavior takes a long time. In the developing world, if you’re only doing research and not doing conservation, you’ve lost the plot. A lot of our birds are so few in number that we can’t even get a sample size for research.
An immature Martial Eagle sits atop a tree. Photo by Dominic Sherony, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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