Cheetah reintroduction in Malawi proved to help vultures

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Four species of critically endangered vulture have returned to a park in southern Malawi from which they disappeared more than 20 years ago, and their comeback is credited to the reintroduction of cheetahs, lions and the carcasses the cats left behind, conservationists say. 

“We started getting vultures on camera traps,” says Sievert. “By the second week of the cheetahs being in the boma the vultures were in the trees around the boma, which was very exciting to see.”

The cheetah reintroduction project has been successful. The population within the 548,000-hectare (1.3 million-acre) park reached 42 at the last count, according to a recent paper in Oryx authored by Sievert. A second generation of cheetahs are now breeding and raising cubs.

Vultures – and cheetahs and lions – disappeared from Liwonde and a number of other protected areas in Malawi in the wake of a poaching crisis in the 1990s and early 2000s.

One effect of the vulture extirpation meant that animals that died from natural causes weren’t picked clean by the birds, whose ability to rapidly consume carcasses and the potentially fatal human and livestock diseases they harbor is legendary.

The return of the vultures was, therefore, hugely welcome. The first two species to arrive back in Liwonde in 2017 were critically endangered white-backed (Gyps africanus) and hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus).

For Malawi’s small breeding population of vultures, protected areas like Liwonde, Lengwe and Majete, where a second population of cheetahs has now been established, are safe havens. So are those in neighboring countries.

Source

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Many great news related to conservation lately

 

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Bumping much needed positive news.

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Amazing!!