By Samuel Boakye Yiadom
21 August, 2024
Samuel Boakye Yiadom conducting vulture surveys at a waste management site in Ghana. Photo courtesy of Samuel Boakye Yiadom.
Growing up in Ghana, I took care of my grandmother’s sheep, which taught me a lot about the importance of vultures in our society. Anytime a sheep died, my grandmother would recommend we take the carcass to the waste site for the vultures to feed on it. She believed that the vultures would reduce or prevent unpleasant smells emanating from the rotten carcass, and reduce the prevalence of respiratory diseases in our community. She also revered the vulture as a sacred bird because traditionally, the vulture is the totem or the traditional symbol of the Asakyiri people, one of the eight clans that makes up the Akan tribe, who are considered the first settlers in Ghana. The totem symbolises cleanliness, patience and endurance, and the Asakyiri people take pride in these traits. For my grandmother, conserving vultures meant conserving our ancestral heritage.
A Hooded Vulture stands on the drain at a village water pump. Photo by jbdodane, CC BY-2.0, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Practices like providing livestock carcasses to vultures helped ensure vultures’ protection and survival in Ghana, and prevailed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Hooded Vulture (Necrosyrtes monachus) was still a common bird. When I was I child, it was easy to observe them nesting in trees close to the waste sites where we used to collect tins and cans we used for making model cars. However, this situation started to change about 20 years ago when vultures began to be targeted by hunters and trappers. They were used as sources of meat by fast food vendors who sold vultures instead of chicken to the unsuspecting public, and are also sold as cures for disease and for ritual use or “black magic.” The persecution of vultures for such purposes, together with factors such as habitat destruction and reduced food supply, has caused a severe decline in vulture populations in Ghana. The Hooded Vulture’s population has not rebounded in the intervening years and unfortunately, it is now critically endangered.
Critically endangered juvenile (left) and adult (right) Hooded Vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus). Photo by Gabriel Buissart, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
As a master’s student at the University of Ghana, I have been working with the IBCP team for several years to assess people’s knowledge and perception of Hooded Vultures together with ecological information relevant to their conservation. The lack of detailed information on their population size, roosting, and breeding habitat characteristics complicates the plight of the species in Ghana, because conservation planning requires this kind of knowledge.Encouragingly, some residents I interviewed in Accra, Sekondi-Takoradi, Kumasi and Tamale demonstrated knowledge of the foraging habit, and population status of the Hooded Vulture, which they regard as ecologically important due to their scavenging. At outdoor slaughterhouses where the species gathers, many people agree that the species improves environmental health by feeding on carcasses that might otherwise spread disease.
Hooded Vultures cleaning an animal skin at a village market. Photo by Dominique Prieur, CC BY-3.0, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Even though Ghanaians in general have a positive perception towards the conservation of the species, some view vultures as bad omens or as dirty due to their scavenging on waste, and some simply report hating the species, such that they do not support their conservation. I believe such views can be changed when effective public education is carried out. Raising awareness about the plight of vultures, their ecological benefits, and their cultural importance should change such people’s attitudes and contribute to informed decisions toward the conservation of the species in Ghana and across its entire range.
Samuel Boakye Yiadom speaks with a staff member at a slaughterhouse in Ghana. Photo courtesy of Samuel Boakye Yiadom.
Unfortunately, in some areas where Hooded Vultures are present, like waste management areas and slaughterhouses, people may offer large sums of money to trap them, giving an indication of how highly they are valued in the black market. Fortunately, these offers are often declined due to the religious beliefs, moral values, and guiding principles of guards and staff. On one occasion when I was discussing this with a staff member, a visiting gentleman took an interest in our conversation. Upon hearing that some people pay large sums for vultures or their eggs or body parts, he entreated me to act “wisely” by cooperating with those involved in the illegal vulture trade, by acting as a middleman. According to him, I was working very hard but securing a job in the field of conservation would not be easy, especially in a country like Ghana where little value is given to nature conservation. In his view, I risked impoverishing myself and my family if I continued working in conservation, whereas involving myself in vulture trade would enable me to get money more quickly and easily.
The entrance to the Metropolitan Waste Management Department in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, visited in the course of vulture surveys. Photo by Samuel Boakye Yiadom.
Others have told me that I will end up nowhere in my current pursuit, because no one really cares about birds here in this part of the world, and I am wasting my precious time. A few people I encountered while collecting data blamed the government and our universities for introducing conservation biology in our institutions. To them, conservation is “useless” if it does not bring any economic gain. Some have simply thought that I’ve gone crazy, judging from the nature of my work. I have travelled 122 transects covering nearly 400 km on a bicycle in four cities, visiting these transects 12 times each between March and September 2023. One woman I interviewed asked if I was married, and told me she did not understand why my wife agreed to allow me to risk my life to study vultures. Her concern was that if I were involved in an accident in the course of the project, who would take care my wife and child?
Samuel Boakye Yiadom (right) stands with fellow IBCP team member Zébigou Kolani during fieldwork on vultures in Mole National Park, Ghana. Photo by Nico Arcilla.
Students like me may be laughingstocks among our peers and families, and some, out of frustration, will leave potential conservation careers to work in other fields. If the challenges confronted by African students in the field of conservation sector go unaddressed, the future of natural resource conservation in Ghana and beyond may be compromised.
However, misconceptions about birds and conservation can be changed through effective public education and more job opportunities for people in the conservation sector, such as in outreach, research, and law enforcement. Needless to say, it is my sincere hope that with national and international support and cooperation, this will happen, so that the birds and all of us who love them will have a bright future.
A young Hooded Vulture in Ghana. Photo by ZSM, CC BY-SA 4.0, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
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