WCC 2016 Res 014 - Activity Report

The Endangered Wildlife Trust has conducted poisoning intervention training workshops to more than 1200 learners during 2016-2017 in South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia and Kenya. The training aims to reduce the impact of wildlife poisoning by creating awareness of the scale and drivers of wildlife poisoning in an African context and enables trainees to identify possible poisoning incidents, rapidly respond to them and follow appropriate protocols in the management, investigation and decontamination of scenes. The training also encourages and provides guidelines for drafting of Poisoning Response Plans that includes the full spectrum of aspects to consider and include in such plans. In addition, an assessment of equipment needs is done during training and poisoning response kits are issued to key nodes that have been trained that provides access to basic equipment to conduct investigations, collect and store samples under field conditions. Training is targeted is identified wildlife poisoning hotspot areas. There are plans to expand this training substantially in the abovementioned countries and to also expand to other known hotspot areas in southern Africa.

Drafting and adoption of the CMS Multi-species Action Plan for Africa-Eurasian Vultures which identifies and suggests actions to address the threat of poisoning to Africa's vultures in the first 5 of its 12 objectives. The Vulture MsAP was adopted by signatories to the Convention on Migratory Species at CMS CP12 in Manila, Philippines in October 2017 and will focus on the implementation of actions to combat poisoning impacting Africa's vultures for the next 12 years. The plan was drafted in partnership between the IUCN SSC Vulture Specialist Group, BirdLife International, Vulture Conservation Foundation and the CMS Raptors Mou and involved more than 250 vulture experts from a wide range of organisations from across the 128 range states that the plan covers.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust, working in partnership with The Peregrine Fund and the IUCN SSC Vulture Specialist Group, have established the Pan-African Wildlife Poisoning Database which aims to collect and collate data on all wildlife poisoning incidents in Africa. Both historical and current data are collected and the oldest record in the database dates from 1961. We are actively engaging with a range of partners in Africa to contribute both existing and future data on incidents to the database and have also launched an App that facilitates both submission of data and access to data summaries. Sourcing data and engagement with existing and potential partners is an on-going process.