- A cluster of mass vulture poisonings in May and June 2025 has drawn attention to an ongoing problem in the transfrontier conservation area that straddles South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
- The field response to the poisonings involved teams of veterinarians, rapid response teams, and stepped-up monitoring of the area, saving the lives of more than 80 vultures.
- The series of incidents triggered meetings involving South Africa National Parks, conservation NGOs and other authorities to assess where systems were lacking and could be improved.
- Experts say national strategies to address poisoning and strengthen vulture conservation need to be complemented by regional action.
A cluster of mass vulture poisonings earlier this year has drawn attention to an alarming, ongoing problem in the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area that straddles South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. According to the African Wildlife Poisoning Database, more than 2,400 vultures have died from poisoning in the GLTFCA, including in South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park, in the past decade. As wide-ranging, slow-breeding keystone species of this landscape’s ecology, vultures need urgent action to protect them, conservation authorities say.
Other raptors, as well as mammal carnivores like hyenas, leopards and lions, have also been poisoned. The Endangered Wildlife Trust, which operates the poisoning database in cooperation with the Peregrine Fund, says approximately 53 lions have been killed by poison in this vast cross-border protected area since 2015. In just the past two years, 14 lions are known to have died from poisoning and a further 10 more caught in snares and then killed by poachers.
John Davies, project coordinator of raptor conservation and research at the Endangered Wildlife Trust, says the series of mass poisonings in May and June triggered meetings involving South Africa National Parks (SANParks), conservation NGOs and other authorities to assess where systems were lacking and could be improved.
“I think that’s a big positive,” Davies tells Mongabay.
André Botha, co-chair of the Vulture Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority, also expresses cautious optimism. “We have witnessed similar meetings in the past, with limited results, but I trust that the current high profile of the recent events will result in concrete action.”
He calls for a raft of short- and long-term actions to address the multiple array of drivers behind the issues of poaching and poisoning.
Addressing poisoning in the short term
The most urgent need is to increase capacity, resources and collaboration to reduce the intensity and impacts of poisoning and poaching in the GLTFCA, experts say.
“I think all of us are kind of realists,” says EWT’s Davies. “We can’t live in a fairy-tale land and just pretend poaching will never happen again. There are obviously levels where you probably could say, if you’re losing very small amounts of birds, the population could absorb that and sustain itself.”
Davies points out that the field response to the Kruger poisonings in May involved teams of veterinarians, rapid response teams, and stepped-up monitoring of the park. All of this was expensive, but ultimately saved the lives of more than 80 vultures.
“It’s super important work and every vulture that’s rescued is vital,” says Campbell Murn, head of conservation, research and education at the Hawk Conservancy Trust. “But it doesn’t stop the poisoning from happening in the first place. ”
Isaac Phaahla, communications manager for Kruger National Park, says SANParks has taken several steps to address the problem, including developing early detection and response systems, creating rapid mobilization teams, increasing patrols in high-risk areas, and raising awareness and education of pesticide use in nearby communities.
“Poisoning and other wildlife crime is on the increase in the Greater Kruger landscape and a regional and integrated approach is needed to address the growing problem of poisoning, snaring and meat poaching,” he wrote in an email.
On the Mozambique side, in Limpopo National Park, the Peace Parks Foundation, which co-manages the protected area, has helped establish an “intensive protection zone” at a known poaching hotspot along the border with Kruger National Park. That’s resulted in a “dramatic drop” in trafficking, according to the organization.
“The idea is to create equal capacity on each side of the border,” says Gillian Rhodes, program manager for combating wildlife crime at Peace Parks.
A GLTFCA poisoning task team, including representatives from the three partner countries, was established in 2016 to address and coordinate responses to the issue. On that front, more collaboration is needed, according to Rhodes.
“From a governance and a coordination point of view, those structures are really useful when you’re working in a cross-boundary and a multi-country landscape like this.” She adds there’s also a need for a dedicated poison response and investigation team across the region, similar to the capacity that EWT has developed in collaboration with SANParks and others.
“We’ve had very few poison cases actually go through the system and people being actually convicted for the use of poison and poaching,” Rhodes says. “We really could improve our investigative capabilities around poison crime scenes.”
A systemic approach
Ramping up enforcement and tackling corruption, a recognized problem among national park authorities, are important short-term actions, Rhodes says, but these will only address one side of the high levels of poaching and poisoning.
She and other experts say the poisoning of vultures and other carnivores in the GLFTCA is driven by poaching, human-wildlife conflict, and a lack of economic opportunities for communities in this border region.
Sustainable solutions would therefore include addressing traditional medicine practices that involve vultures and other wildlife parts. Though this practice isn’t considered a major driver of the recent vulture poisoning incidents, engaging with traditional healers and practitioners to develop alternatives to their use is still necessary. It is a “socially complex” issue, Davies says, but one that should also be addressed using national laws and legislation.
Davies says providing nearby communities with employment and income linked to conservation may lead to exploring solutions that are usually rejected by conservationists, such as trophy hunting. He says his organization is neutral on the issue, but his personal view is that such an approach could provide income and employment to communities living near protected areas.
“If people have jobs around protected areas, there’s no reason they wouldn’t care about those protected areas the same way we do,” he says. “There needs to be more of a mindset, like a long-term game plan on getting to the point that communities are a strong element within the conservation of these protected areas. With that, it’ll bring a whole new wave of kind of management and control on these things that currently, yes, everyone’s attempting to do it, but it still has a long way to go.”
Others, such as Annette Hübschle, a researcher at the University of Cape Town, emphasize the need to gain a better understanding of how to make dangerous agricultural chemicals and pesticides less readily available for wildlife crime.
“There are, of course, cross-border issues and the need to stop pesticides coming into countries,” she says. “Pesticides that are banned in one country should probably be banned in neighboring countries as well. So, there needs to be some international collaboration.”
Rhodes echoes the call: “There is still a huge dearth of information about the poison supply chain.”
Collaborating with implementation
Lovelater Sebele, senior vulture conservation officer for Southern Africa at BirdLife Africa, is among many experts who say national strategies to address poisoning and strengthen vulture conservation need to be complemented by regional action.
She points to a regional vulture conservation strategy currently under development. “It’s good that individual countries have their vulture action plans, but it also means by having this strategy, we are acknowledging the need to actually have collaborative effort across the range states for vultures within the region,” Sebele says. But, crucially, such efforts must be backed by adequate resources — and this isn’t guaranteed at this stage.
Botha, from the Vulture Specialist Group, also says strategies need to be backed with resources to carry them out. He says he’s hopeful that in the wake of the string of high-profile poisoning events, the regional vulture action plan and a draft poison management strategy in South Africa are steps in the right direction. But he says much more is needed, particularly regarding community engagement and law enforcement.
“At the moment, just going and managing poisoning sites is a reactive action,” he says. “What is lacking is an effective overall strategy that is drafted and agreed upon by all stakeholders and implemented effectively to reduce the prevalence of poisoning across the entire area.”
Increasing knowledge of the movements of vultures, garnered thanks to tracking efforts, is showing that what happens in Kruger National Park and the wider GLTFCA affects vulture populations across the region.
“These aren’t Kruger birds, they’re not Limpopo birds, they’re not Kimberley birds, they’re not Zambezi birds,” says Murn from the Hawk Conservancy Trust. “They’re Southern African birds, especially the young ones.”
Banner image: A rapid response to a poisoning event in Kruger National Park in May this year saved more than 80 vultures. Such activities are vitally important, say conservationists, but more action is needed to address drivers of poisoning and poaching. Image courtesy of the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
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Citation:
Gore, M. L., Hübschle, A., Botha, A. J., Coverdale, B. M., Garbett, R., Harrell, R. M., … Bowerman, W. W. (2020). A conservation criminology-based desk assessment of vulture poisoning in the great Limpopo Transfrontier conservation area. Global Ecology and Conservation, 23, e01076. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01076
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