Vulture's manifest

"No one's going to try to save a species if they don't love them", said Kerri Wolter.

When I read this sentence in an article about vultures some time ago it really touched my heart. I was thinking about it for a long time and I have to confess this sentence could have been a sentence of MY blog! ;o)

People protect their families, their goods and chattles, their pet. Why? Because together they built up all their belongings and they just like to be surrounded by things they love.

Often people protect "impersonal" things, too, like other people, animals and things that don't belong to our everyday life. But we protect it, because these things seems to be valuable to us. We donate for people in hunger crisis, natural disasters, nature conservation and for all the things we believe in. I guess most of all people donated for special parts in nature conservation at least once in a lifetime: For preservation and development of nature resources, for zoos in their hometowns or for special projects and organisations who care for nature. And very often we feel sorry and broken-hearted, when we face stories about dying or killed baby-animals: Seals, dolphines or pets like dogs or cats. We like those animals, because we got used to them in our social life, because of neighbours, plush animals in toy shops, animated cartoons or when we talked about them in school lessons (instead of talking about ANY other creature).

There must be some truth in it: „No one's going to try to save a species if they don't love them!"

Why should we care if somewhere on earth, in a country we cannot even pronounce it's name, centipede no.347 becomes extinct, unknown kinds of fish are dying in drift-nets or the habitat of any bugs get destroyed because of new highways!? These animals don't mean anything to us and obviously we would not even recognize if they become extinct. But I am absolutely sure, that EVERY SINGLE SPECIES on earth has it's admirers and supporters, who care for them and like to protect them. And that's alright!

Admittedly the creatures I really love are not as unknown as centipede no.347, but many people underestimate, despise or even DON'T take notice of them.

I am talking about: VULTURES!When people listen to the word "vulture" they often think: "Nasty, ugly, dirty!" They just eat rotten meat, have a naked, nasty head and are definitely not deserving protection. They have nothing on cute, tiny baby-dolphines, fluffy, soft baby-seals or twee 101 Dalmatians. Should be really protect such useless animals? YES!

I discovered my love for this beautiful, sympathic, fascinating creatures many many years ago! One day, when I was a little girl, I spoted Eurasian Griffon Vultures in the Zoo Duisburg (West Germany). Next to big enclosures with elephants, giraffes and oll the other "everyone's darlings" I saw the griffons sitting in an enclosure with their clean, bright white ruff and their magnificent giant wings. From this day on I was aware of vultures and met them everywhere: In Walt-Disney-movies like "The Jungle Book" or "Robin Hood", where vultures just were supporting actors, in different zoos, in books and magazines, at postcards of "Uli Stein", in reports about nature on tv and sometimes I even found plush vultures in toy shops. But I am sure I just was aware of them, because I set my heart on vultures and they got really important to me!

I absolutely respect, that most of the people neither know enough about vultures to be aware of them, nor are regularly attentive to vultures. Now and then I realize the same in my circle of friends: When they are watching reports about nature on tv or a travel report they don't just talk about it. But when a vulture takes part in the report, even just for few seconds, they tell me about it the next day! I would make a bet they would never have payed attention to the vulture, if they would not know my passions for this amazing birds! It would be just one animal amongst many other animals, and I guess people rather remember a couple of giraffes infront of a sunset or a flock of thousands of Gnus than a single vulture who is feeding carrion or sitting in a tree.

I don't expect all people I talk to or who read my blog to start taking care of vultures or tell me how beautiful, fascinating and cute they are. Even if someone would tell me for hours and hours how beautiful big, hairy spiders and how deadal their nests are, I won't like them anyway. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and to someone spiders are special - like vultures are very special to me. By writing my blog, volunteering in vulture rescue centres and talking about vultures all the time I pursue the goal of making people aware of these amazing creatures and inspire them to thing about vultures.

Vultures are very useful and necessary for people, because by eating carrions of dead animals they avoid disease transmission to people. In India people learned the hard way what happens when the largest vulture colony on earth got close to extinction, because suddenly the streets were covered by carcasses of India's "Holy Cows". In the 90's Indians often used the pain killer "Diclofenac" for farm animals. Vultures ate their carcasses and millions died very agonised from renal failure :o( In the end 95-99 % of all Asian vultures died and many vulture species are threatened with extinction world wide :o( Carcasses in the streets weren't eaten, because there were no vultures anymore and people got endangered by diseases. Another danger to people was caused by the growing number of wild (mostly rabid) dogs, who did not have any other predators like vultures at the carrions anymore.

But how can people get enough knowledge about such big problems, if they don't live in the concerned area? How should they comprehend the connections between pain killers, vultures, diseases and wild dogs, if there is noone teaching and explaining it to them? In general these topics just don't belong to the common lessons at school - and what people don't know they don't like to spent time on.And that's why I started writing my vulture-blog: I like to bring together as much information about the different species of vultures as possible and I like to get these information across to people in a plain way. That's my way to participate in educational work and to raise people's awareness of usefulness and beauty of vultures!

Maybe some people will turn on their loud speaker now when there's a vulture on tv. Maybe they start asking me questions about vultures or like to discuss about their fascinating characteristics. And maybe I even inspire some people with my fascination of vultures...

…right at this moment I will achieve my aim!!! …because we just protect what we really love!!!