Visiting a Vulture Restaurant to watch vultures devour pigs unfortunate enough to have died of ‘natural causes’ wasn’t an item on my bucket list, but good friends invited me, and it was hard to say no.
Read more: Vulture RestaurantMy feelings on the return journey were completely reversed. “We have to tell everyone about this,” I told them as if they didn’t know. “I had no idea vultures are so important and so endangered.”
Vulture Restaurants keep vultures alive when other man-made interventions destroy their food sources, electrocute them and poison them with bait or the drugs we inject into our cattle. But why should we care beyond empathy for another living species?
As I think most of us understand, vultures are the Waste Pickers of the animal/avian world. They clear away discarded cadavers and recycle the meat, but it doesn’t stop there. Vulture guts are adapted to destroy pathogens such as anthrax, botulism and rabies, reducing the spread of disease amongst wildlife, livestock, and humans. Without the vultures, farmers must use the vaccines and drugs we ultimately ingest and then expel into our water tables and rivers, with the consequences that I won’t use space to list here.
Work on the Nyoka Ridge Vulture Restaurant started in 2010, led by Vulture Lover John Wesson, and supported by Brits-Hartebeespoort Rotarians, BirdLife Harties, WESSA (Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa) and Magaliesberg Conservatory. It was completed yesterday, August 12, 2023. Now visitors can watch the vultures flying and feeding from a well-equipped, comfortable, photographer-suitable hide while learning about their importance to the entire animal world, including us.
Google Vulture Restaurant; there may be one near you. Or at least support the cause and maybe even adopt a vulture.
