Vulture wins hearts at WEF

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Vulture wins hearts at WEF

 

 

June 05 2008 at 07:46PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was only a small vulture, but he made a big impression on delegates to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town on Thursday.Monty, a crow-sized American black vulture, was the star of a presentation by Johannesburg conservationist Gerhard Verdoorn on "corporate vultures".Verdoorn, who has studied the birds for 26 years, delivered a talk making a lighthearted comparison between vulture species' niches in the environment, and the corporate world, but underlaid it with a strong environmental message.He told his audience that the lammergeier, or bearded vulture, was stately and solitary, and always nested in the best places.

 

"This is actually the board of directors of the vulture world," he said. "They don't live with the plebs."The lappet-faced vulture, with its featherless red face, was the chief executive: not too good looking, but tough."You don't pick a fight with him," he said.It was to the lappet that other vultures looked to rip open a carcass "and give them access to the resource".At the bottom of the hierarchy was the African white-backed vulture, the equivalent of a company's unskilled workforce, which congregated in large numbers.At the site of a kill, 70 percent of them would be there to feed, ten percent to look, and 20 percent to fight."They're like UK soccer fans. They come for a fight: they cause big s**t wherever they go," he said.At the end of Verdoorn's "corporate" lecture, handler Alex Prescott, from the Eagle Encounters raptor centre near Stellenbosch, entered with Monty perched on a wrist protected by a leather glove.As Verdoorn introduced him, Monty nuzzled Prescott, who scratched his head in return.The bird also obligingly spread his wings, and allowed himself to be stroked by members of the audience."My main objective is to change people's perceptions about vultures," Verdoorn told Sapa afterwards."Western people in particular have a very bad idea about vultures. They think they're filthy, dirty, unclean birds."By relating them to the corporate world, it shows vultures have a special role to play in ecology, and we are just like them."That would hopefully open peoples' minds to be more positive-thinking about these birds."Verdoorn said in Africa, all vultures were on the red data list of endangered species, because of food shortages, poisoning and climate change."None of them are doing very well," he said. - Sapa