Earth Hour 2012

Today evening, at 20.30, millions of people all over the world will turn of the lights for one hour to celebrate our unique planet and our wonderful nature - and "to uniting people to protect the planet"!!! Of course I will join Earth Hour 2012!!!

Why I post this article here? Is there a conncection between Earth Hour 2012 and vultures? Of course it is!!! In my point of view vultures are wonderful examples for the beauty of our nature. Not just amazing to look at, but a wonder of evolution: Being the health police of our planet vultures eat carcasses and next to cities even trash, so they help keeping our planet clean and prevent the transmission of diseases. Unfortunately most people still don't honor this, cause I often hear: "Vultures? Urgh, ugly, they are eating dead animals!" But what would happen to our planet if vultures would not like to do this ungrateful job anymore? People should start thinking about these consequences - not just today at 20.30 for just one hour!!!
Sadly, every year copious quantities of vultures (and other birds) die because of collision with power lines and electrocution.
Vultures like to sit down on the highest point of the surrounding when resting or nesting. Unfortunately most of the times these highest points are pylons of power lines. When colliding with a power line or a pylon vultures crash, break their wings and would die a wretched death if noone comes across. And even if someone will find the injured vultures, in most cases broken wings must be amputated :-( As a consequence, living and surviving in their natural surroundings will not be possible anymore and the vultures have to stay in an enclosure of a vulture rescue centre like VulPro in South Africa for the rest of their lives.
Some vultures die as a result of electrocution when touching two power lines at the same time, touching unisolated powerlines or when the power gets conducted by nesting material or vultures dung. No vulture will survive electrocution! And some more vultures get caught up in non-vulture-proved pylons, cannot free themselves and die of starvation or because of their bad injuries.
The South African electricity public utility ESKOM, constructor of the most power lines in whole Africa, runs a project in collaboration with VulPro to protect vultures by putting dummy-pylons inside the vultures enclosures and analyse the reaction of the vultures to different pylon-designs (more details are written in an older post)... but as usual people will never consequently implement measures to protect vultures when they have to spend money.
One more reason not just to turn off the light but turn off as many sources of electricity as possible, to lay a marker on protection of vultures and preservation of our wonderful nature!!! Count me in!!!