Raptor conservation in Africa faces enormous challenges. Hand in 
hand with the loss of wildlife we witness a loss in birds of prey. 
Some 70% of our wildlife has vanished in East Africa during the last 
two decades (Wildlife.info. Issue 10, July 2003). 

We are used to our own kind of problems. We have what are 
desperately poor multitudes striving to survive. Habitat loss is the 
number one reason why we have lost our raptors, closely followed by 
disturbance, persecution and pollutants. In different countries 
these pressures may be in a different order. For example there are 
people in USA or Europe, who actively enjoy raptors. Raptors abound 
and increase when so welcomed. But not all westernised ideals should 
be adopted, as there are those that shoot raptors in their thousands 
simply for fun.

On the 14 Oct 2003, I received a phone call from my colleague Dr 
Munir Virani who had just picked up a Steppe Buzzard from Jean 
Hartley who had found it exhausted in her garden near Westlands, 
Nairobi. In fact her garden abuts the infamous Karua Forest. My 
mechanic Oudhay Bali lives next door to Jean and from his verandah I 
yearly observe over-wintering Steppe Buzzards in the tiny fragment 
of indigenous forest still remaining. This so recently much grander 
forest had, only less than seven years ago, the mighty Crowned 
Eagle, a true forest predator of monkeys and duiker. Today, of 
course it is long gone thanks to the illegal allocations by some top 
officials in our previous government.

These Steppe Buzzards originate from Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia 
and western Siberia. Leaving their breeding grounds in August most 
of the birds we get in East Africa presumably migrate from Europe 
and Asia and go south through the Bosphorus, Middle East, Israel and 
over the Suez and on into Africa. Individuals reach the southern 
most tip of Africa, 6000 miles away from "home" in October. In Kenya 
a good portion stop off en route for the entire winter. They reverse 
this migration in March the following year. In many respects 
therefore we can call these birds "ours" because they spend just as 
much time here than over there. Such an event and the difficulties 
each must face during their yearly migration is hardly 
comprehensible.

As they move into Africa and settle on their old haunts, such as my 
mechanic's back garden, they must cope with the inevitable changes. 
Much of Athi River, a formerly small railway town near Nairobi Park 
outside my office window has quadrupled in size since the Steppe 
Buzzards left for "Eurasia" last year. What they, or the myriad of 
migrant birds must do when their habitat is so invaded is "move on", 
a better alternative than that facing our resident birds who must 
die. But there becomes a limit as to how far further on they can 
move, and so despite the urbanised forest of Nairobi and its largely 
raptor-unfriendly people they have no choice but to try to stay and 
survive.

It is just this situation, in which we in Kenya receive the large 
bulk of so many European and Asia birds and raptors that has obliged 
a particular conservation commitment. We in Kenya play host 
to "foreign" birds and as such we should, in theory, respect the 
laws of those countries from whence they came. An endangered Lesser 
Kestrel wandering from its "home" in Spain, may well find itself in 
peril in Kenya due to extensive Locust or Red billed Quelea 
spraying. Rationally we should be able to make this an issue for the 
Spanish to investigate. If only for diplomatic reasons we in Kenya 
should feel moved to help protect the Spanish bird. It is not a new 
idea, but an interesting one. For Kenyans can make up their own mind 
as to what species of Kenyan animal is allowed to live, but we can 
have very few rights to make similar judgement on another national's 
animal. 

The Steppe Buzzard in Munir's arms was very ill, because it looked 
tame. Immediately the warning bells sounded and I rushed it home to 
attempt first to re-hydrate it. Although a common migrant I had 
seldom had opportunity to observe one closely let alone handle one. 
She was a first year bird, probably born on some east European wood 
only five or six months ago. The very fine markings on the chest 
were neat and striking similar to a Saker Falcon. Her head was 
streaked brown, the neck and back too, but with rusty tan markings 
on each feather tip. Her tail held eleven dark bands over a base of 
white merging into rufous then grey. Altogether a very dapper and 
pretty looking bird. 

At home I sought a vein in which to inject the vital fluids it 
needed, but to no avail. Its condition was so low that it had no 
blood volume. I gave it oral re-hydration and sub-cutaneous 
injections. When it perked up I gave it a mixture of liver slurry 
via a tube into its stomach. By late afternoon she was standing and 
gently picking at some food, greatly encouraged by the presence of 
Superb Starlings feeding close by. 

In the evening she was standing and had taken in enough food and 
fluids for the day. She had done her best to squeeze my fingers with 
her talons and I had marvelled not at how strong she was, but at how 
tiny and harmless her feet were. She had earlier thrown up a cast 
made entirely of insect remains, and clearly their role in life was 
to eat insects and perhaps a few rodents.

After arranging suitably warm quarters I retired to bed happy and 
the next morning expected to see a perky bird. Instead she was 
worse. In a desperate attempt to resuscitate her I opted to give IV 
fluids in the only vein I could find, the jugular. Even this, the 
largest of all surface veins held so low a volume that the needle 
failed repeatedly to puncture it. At last I made an incision to part 
the skin and expose the vein. I only partly succeeded and during the 
arduous procedure she died.

I was struck by an anomaly. She had eaten and consumed sufficient 
amounts of fluid, yet remained in a stupor. The languid gaze she 
stared out of her box was an indication of some other ailment.

On post mortem her frail body was both starved and anaemic. I noted 
a lesion on the left side of the gut wall was made up with matted 
feathers that had punctured the skin and plugged the hole. Sure 
enough, I traced a tiny hole through her left knee joint. With the 
wings closed the entire path of this single hole could be traced 
through the secondaries, knee and then through and into the gut 
where I found a single, (probable 12 gauge) shotgun pellet. It had 
punctured the lower gut, which had healed well, but the enormous 
bile and anaemia indicated lead poisoning. The bird had been shot 
while sitting still, by a bad shot.

In Kenya we can make a concise statement in reference to the kind of 
people that carry shotguns. They are mostly affluent expats or 
descents thereof, each armed with a Game Bird shooting licence. I 
have had quite a number of these people delight in telling me 
stories of shooting Augur Buzzards, African Hawk Eagles and Martial 
Eagles because they "bothered" their wives chickens. Others levelled 
their expensive shotguns at hawks that made worse a crime than 
eating birds, wild ones at that. That many of these individuals have 
held positions of conservation influence is confusing to say the 
least. They have no legal ground to stand on even if it took their 
only milking cow!

When shooting hawks is so much an embarrassing dim recollection of 
the game keeping past abroad, it would seem particularly out of 
place in Kenya, the land of renowned conservation effort. I am 
willing to sympathise with a poor chicken farmer who has a 
persistent hawk making a real difference to his earnings (so long as 
he has the chickens protected behind wire!). Yet even in these 
cases, some leniency and a change of husbandry management is often 
shown once they have been exposed to education. That the total 
number of some of our raptor species nationwide is less than an 
average number of kids in one class room, must surely have made no 
impression on the vigorous pioneer attitude of our hawk shooting up 
country farmer. 

It was with mounting anger that I recalled the goodwill shown by 
both Jean Hartley and Munir Virani, and the absolutely effrontery of 
some man with a big gun. This bird was an insect eater. It cannot 
constitute a threat of any kind. It was beautiful. Now after so much 
effort it lay dead.

But an uncomfortable idea of how this bird died was evidenced by the 
fact that the wound was old and had healed. The leg wound had surely 
made hunting difficult and led to its starvation. The lead pellet 
could either have remained walled off in tissue or leaked poison 
into it body, over time. I guessed the wound to have been about one 
month or six weeks old. 

The bird had therefore not been shot in Kenya. It had been shot on 
migration. In Kenya we all hear stories of the slaughter of tens of 
thousands of birds, many of whom are raptors in such infamous 
locations as Malta. But we do not really perceive this as a threat 
to our birds. Here lay irrefutable evidence that people abroad 
kill "our" Steppe Buzzards. In this case the bird was possibly shot 
en route between Eastern Europe and Egypt.

In trying to make Kenyans conserve raptors we have overlooked the 
persecution of shared raptors outside our borders. It would be a 
fine reversal if our so-called developing country would lobby 
against the persecution of these raptors in the "developed world" We 
could argue that these people are aggravating our loss of crops and 
livestock by removing the insect and rodent predators.

Simon Thomsett.