Hello everyone, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast. And I'm very pleased to be able to welcome today Neil Forbes, who is a veterinary surgeon, famous for his love and care for exotic animals when he was the owner of the Great Western Referral Centre down in Swindon. But we're gonna be talking today about a a a topic close to, I think, both of our hearts, but I know Neil's been doing a lot of work in this area, and that is the plight of the vulture.

So, perhaps, Neil, before we dive into that, tell us a little bit about your history for those people who, who don't know who you are listening into the podcast. OK, well, great to be here, thanks for inviting me, Antony, and good to be talking to all you guys out there. OK, I graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in 1983, and like all the best veterinary veterinary sur.

Commenced work in the Yorkshire Dales, up in Sedburgh, and then, after 18 months, I moved from there and, I was destined to be going down to the West Country, but then a job came up, which just happened to be, 8 miles from Slimbridge, and wetlands Trust, which was, is the largest wildflower collection in Europe and 15 miles from the International, Bird of Prey centre at Newent. And so that was, that was the obvious choice for me. I had a familial history in, in birds, ornithology, and so on.

My grandfather and his, his brother were both very famous in the bird world. My grandfather is a falconer, and his brother is a wildfowl research worker. So, it was kind of in the genes.

I couldn't help it. It's not my fault. So I went to Swindon and then in the fullness of time, 1992, I became a Royal Col of Veterinary Surgeons specialist in zoo and wildlife bracketsavian.

And then in 1996 became a European college specialist, and on we go. And then I moved from Stroud to Swindon in 2004. We set up the Great Western Referral centre and I was head of the exotic service, the Great Western Exotics.

We had 5 clinicians just doing exotic animal medicine. I had a lovely time. But yes, as Anthony says, vultures is very much, a, a, a real penchant, a hobby horse, if you like.

And it's true to say that vultures are the most endangered group of birds, in the world, and it's been going on for a long, long time, and they're really struggling. And I see myself as, as very, very lucky really that, I mean, I think it's true to say that veterinary surgeons, through their careers and their work, often have tremendous numbers of different skills that can be applied to conservation, to humanity projects, all sorts of things around the world. And I think it's great that for those of us who may be retired a little bit earlier or maybe just feeling very fit at retirement age can apply some of those skills for the benefit of whether it be wildlife or, or, developing countries or human calamities and so forth.

And so in my situation, through my career, one of my interests has been orthopaedic work, avian orthopaedic work, and. I was already travelling to Africa and had the opportunity to meet with Volpro, which is the main vulture rehabilitation, facility in South Africa, and realised just how dreadful the whole situation was, and that I had skills and knowledge and experience that would allow me to hopefully make a difference to the potential extinction of a number of species. I think the interesting thing that you said there, Neil, was .

You know, whether it be for conservation, for people, for whatever, but as I think we all get a bit older and wiser, we realise all of this is connected anyway holistically, if we get rid of the vultures, as we saw in India, there was a rise in the number of dogs on the streets, and of course rabies went up, which was a human disease, obviously affecting dogs as well, but many more deaths happened because we were upsetting the, the, the equilibrium, so to speak. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you know, everything has found its own niche in the in the ecosystem, over centuries of evolution and development, and nature hates a vacuum.

If you take one element out, so you mentioned the, the Asian vulture crisis and just to remind people, this was first noticed in the end of last century, so about 1999. And they, in India, they lost 99.9% of all the vultures over a 20-year period.

So you may say, well, 20 years, that's a long time actually in in conservation terms, that's quite a short time. So, a a tremendous crash in the vulture population. And as you rightly said, that, that meant because the vulture vultures are, euphemistically referred to as nature's cleanup crew.

They're there to eat rubbish, rotting meat, etc. Etc. And as we all know, they have the ability of eating anthrax and botulism.

And salmonella and nasty E. Coli and so on, and neutralising it. So they do nature and and and human population a tremendous service in terms of cleaning up.

70% of the dead carcasses on the Masai Mara in Kenya are consumed by vultures. So if all of a sudden those vultures aren't there, someone else is going to eat that meat. In Africa, it seems to be the i crows.

In Asia, it was certainly, as you say, the feral dogs, and the feral dogs increased and we had an increase of, it was published a 600,000 additional rabies deaths, on an annual basis, just simply because the the the loss of the vultures. So, yeah, it, and, you know, this. Concept of one health that people are more and more interested in and and it really is very, very valid that we can't think of ourselves as the top dog and we'll do what we like to this system that we live in, it does all interact with each other, you know, whether we're talking about food or animals or ourselves, COVID, etc.

Even influenza around the corner maybe. You know, we do interact with everyone and we, we. If we ignore it, you know, we, we will come to regret it at our peril.

Absolutely. And it it seems such a shame that vultures can cope with all of those bugs and yet with a non-steroidal drug that goes into their system through eating, you know, a carcass, a cattle carcass, that, that is almost, you know, it ensures its death, doesn't it? That's right.

So, so basically what happened, they say they discovered the, the, the population crash in 1999. It was 2004, an American research worker, discovered that, the vultures were dying of kidney failure, and that was then put down to diclofenac, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and over time we've come to appreciate that vultures are killed by the vast majority of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, meloxicam being an exception. And there is just one other, nonsteroidal they found recently which, which is safe for vultures.

So basically, as you say, if a carcass, whether that be human or, animal, because in India, the, the Parsi sect, use what they call sky burials. They have a tower and they strap carcasses to the tower and the vultures would then consume the carcass, and you know, whether you believe in, in. What the policy you'd like to do or not, it doesn't matter.

The point is that for thousands of years, that sect in India has disposed of their dead in that way, and then because of the vulture loss, they couldn't, and, and, you know, it's just such a fundamental thing. So yes, it had a big, a big effect on that, but, you know, the good news is with, with India, although politically it's very difficult to ensure that non-steroidals are really, really removed from the, the supply market in India, it has predominantly been done and they've set up captive breeding stations in Nepal and in India and Pakistan. And those are being successful now.

There's a lot of tremendous work, by the RSPB and Institute of Zoology in London, working with, with others out there, and, and they've turned it around, and it'll be many, many years before it gets back to what it was. And I think at this point it's perhaps worth just sharing with you the. Productivity of vultures, which is one of the vulture family's great problems.

They lay one egg a year, just one egg. And they rear one chick every other year. So, and they're not mature until they're 5 or 6 years old.

So it means that if anything happens, you know, species of these types are much more susceptible to, to threats to their population because they don't have the ability to, build their population numbers back up quickly enough, . There are obviously ways to do it in captivity. If they lay one egg, we can actually, leave that egg with the parents, perhaps for 10 days just to, to help the, you know, obviously it's fertilised, but to help the early development happening, and then we can move it into an artificial incubator.

And by doing that before 14 days, we will actually trigger the mum, the hen, to lay a second egg. And then of course when the first egg hatches, we flip that back underneath Mum and take out the second egg and then hopefully get the second and, and there have been some very successful experiments now. I was talking to someone yesterday about bid vultures in Europe.

Where they've actually persuaded mom and dad bearded vulture to have two nests and, and have a chick in each, each nest so that they've actually been able to AA 100% increase in the production rate of captive bid de vultures. So there are some great things that we can be doing, but that, that's really why vultures have such a challenge. But to say India, although it was terrible, in all honesty, it was pretty.

Straightforward to sort it out, that's a terrible under underestimation, but it, you know, it's something that can be sorted. Africa is totally different. Yeah.

This, this head starting I think is, is useful for a lot of species, isn't it, that are endangered to, to really give them a, a helping hand. . I, I suppose the problem is that as you said, in India, it has been a relatively straightforward problem to solve.

I know, well not not relatively straightforward, it's been difficult. I know Nepal reading, I'm an avid reader of the BBC Wildlife magazine, and Nepal was seen as a real sentinel that that really started the process off for India as well, didn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, very successful with the breeding and .

Of course, one of the great challenges is you, if you are. I was gonna say captive breeding nowadays we like to refer to it as conservation breeding. If you are doing that, then according to the IUCN guidelines, you shouldn't be releasing the captive-bred youngsters back to the wild, unless the wild environment is safe from the danger that caused the crash in the first place, .

And that has been a little bit of a problem in some of the areas in Asia, but, but as I say, generally speaking, that is sorted and, you know, it may take 1520 years to get populations, sort of up and stable and, and a lot longer to back how they were, but, but as I say, interestingly, Neil, just going back to the party tribe, if they were taking non-steroidals. Was that affecting the vultures as well? Yes, that's why I mentioned it is because it was consuming any carcass, whether that be human or animal, that was, had recently been, medicated with diclofenac, or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, it would have the same and it did have the same effect.

As you said, Neil, in some ways relatively straightforward, get rid of the non-steroidals and things should improve and obviously use meloxicam as the drug of choice when you're treating cattle or whatever. Africa is a lot more difficult, isn't it, because I know I was reading an article about the poachers actually poison the vultures because they don't want the vultures to warn the guards that they've just poached something. So how, how, what other factors are coming in place to, to make it more complicated in Africa?

We add that bit into the story as we come through, but I think the important thing for people to appreciate is that. The African vulture population has been declining for 60 years. OK, it's not a new thing, it's a very old thing, and it isn't one cause, it's a number of causes.

So, and the, the, the incidence of different causes does vary from one area of of Africa to another. But in essence, we have conflict with power generation, so that means. Being electrocuted on power lines, flying into power lines, or hitting these days, hitting, wind, turbines, and that is responsible.

Eskom itself, who is the government owned electricity producing company in South Africa, they, they put their hand up, and they told me this face to face in a meeting, in, in Johannesburg, they are responsible for 34% of all the vulture deaths. And that, that's a, a horrific figure. And although, you know, they're redesigning pylons to try and get the wires further away from the actual pylon, so that the chance of a bird extending its wing and actually while standing on a power cable, touched the pylon or vice versa.

They, they've done that bit of it, . But they haven't put enough scarers on the, on the wires so that vultures see the wires and don't play into the wires. So there's a tremendous amount more they could be doing, but the reality is, Eskom is a bankrupt government-owned company, you know, if it were a privately owned company, I can guarantee they would have been taken to court and sued to hell and back, but you just simply can't do it.

It's not effective. So anyway, power generation is one thing. Second thing is black magic, what is referred to as mutti.

So unfortunately, somewhere around 30% of, of, of deaths is caused by local people. Killing on purpose vultures, so that vulture body parts can be consumed either eaten or smoked, because this will allow them to see into the future. If you sleep with either an owl or a vulture head under your pillow, you'll wake up knowing the lottery numbers for next Friday evening and instantly you'll be a millionaire, and this sort of thing.

And so, you know, the, when, when we're talking about black magic, what we're talking about is not just seeing into the future, but also, health, recovering from nasty diseases, whether it be malaria or AIDS or whatever, and you can say, well, that's ridiculous, but again, think about it, these people have. Had faith in the black magic doctor for generation after generation after generation, even though they have access to Western medicine and Western doctors, and going to see a western doctor is cheaper than going to see a black magic doctor. 80% of local people still choose to go to see a black magic doctor, and the black magic doctor wants these body parts because that's part of his healing process.

So that's 30% due to that, and then as you rightly say, we have poisoning now. There's always been a bit of accidental poisoning, so that's where the farmer. Is putting out bait, poison bait to try and kill lion jackal hyena.

In other words, species of wildlife that are putting his farm stock at risk. And although you and I can criticise that and say it's awful, these are subsistence farmers who are trying to feed their family, and you can, you know, understand why there's a problem. There are some, some very good people like the Masai who, who, you know, work with lions and, do a lot of positive things for lions as, as, as well as looking after their farm stock.

So anyway, you can understand that's accidental poisoning, but come 2010 and the South African World soccer World Cup, there was then suddenly a massive increase in Malicious poisoning of vultures, and this was for, for two reasons. One was, as you, you pointed out yourself, Anthony earlier, that If someone goes to poach an elephant, they shoot the elephant. They will then take 4 hours to cut the dusts out.

Now during that 4 hour period, the vultures are circling overhead. The rangers see the vultures, think, Aha, there's a carcass, there might be a poacher, and they then go and swoop down and, and, catch the poachers. So the poachers have understood that actually the vultures are giving them away, so they thought, well, the best thing to do is kill the vultures, then it won't be a problem for me.

So that was the start of it with elephants, and then it actually progressed to rhino as well. Rhino poaching used to be simply done by shooting. And that was bad enough, but they've changed, not all, but a lot of the rhino poaching now is done by poisoned food, so they'll take either, carrot, peelings or cabbage and lace it with poison, and then poison the rhino and basically walk beside it until it falls over and then take the horn off.

And so basically, and, and the reason for that is that the gunshot. Used to kill the rhino previously could be detected and again the rangers could find out. So poisoning has become safer to them, but the end result has been that you then have a rhino carcass, which is poisoned.

And of course any carcass that's that's sitting around, the vultures are gonna come and eat. So in that situation, it, it's a, a collateral damage to the vultures. It may benefit the poachers themselves anyway, but, but yes, we have all these terrific, terrible things going on.

And let me just put it in context. There are 11 species of, sorry, yeah, 11 species of vulture in, in, in Africa. And of those, there are 7 that are either endangered or critically endangered.

So the, the Cape vulture, the lapi vulture, and the Egyptian vulture are all endangered species, whereas the white-headed and the hooded vulture are critically endangered, and I'm separating those two out for a start because those two species are Anticipated to be extinct in 2027. That's 4 years' time. OK, and we're not talking 20 years away, it's 4 years' time.

There's also the whiteback voucher and the Ruppel's voucher. Now, all of those 4 species there. There are less than 5000 individuals left in the wild.

That means that each of those is rarer than a black rhinoceros. We all know about the plight of the black rhinoceros. How many people know there are 4 species of vulture in Africa that are in a worse state than than the rhinoceros?

And as I said before, you know, they're not mature until they're 5 or 6. They only lay one egg a year, they only rear 11 chick every other year, and they're in a desperate, desperate plight. So how did I get involved?

Well, as I say, I was travelling out there, I was introduced to Volt Pro, . I did some work with the International centre of Birds of Prey and Newent here, Jamiah Parry Jones, myself, and Holly Kale, her curator, and Adam Bloch, her general manager. We went out there and, did some teaching.

I was teaching about rehabilitating birds, so that basically when they came into care, they got looked after better. They got hopefully some diagnostics done so that those that were fixable could get back to the wild quickly, . Holly was talking about artificial incubation, and I was talking about rearing neonate vault of chicks and so on and so forth, and, and, and Mima and Adam were also contributing to the teaching process.

So we kicked that off with that and that was 1 January time and. During the January period, we were there for about 10 days, and during that period they had 23 injured wild vultures brought into care. And it really got to me the last, the last day, .

A white-back vulture, so one of the critically endangered species with less than 5000 left, came in with a compound fractured humerus and Valpro phoned their. Avian Veterinary Service, which was at the University of Esterport, the exotic department, and they said, oh yeah, sure, we can see it, bring it in 3 days' time. And I just about threw a wobbly.

I mean, you know, the animal's in pain, it's got a compound fracture, there's already infection. And it's a critically endangered species, local fauna and fauna, and they, they think it's appropriate to leave it 3 days before it gets treated. So I had a chat with the people, and it made me realise that actually, you know, apart from.

Generous, well-meaning, members of the public doing rehabilitation and some, some veterinary staff as well. What we needed to do was to actually train the veterinary profession better. So I then produced a number of courses, rehabilitation for vets, diagnostics, critical care treatments, orthopaedic surgery, we did some endoscopy as well, a whole range of different subjects, and we taught those two veterinary surgeons, and so I would do a lecture tour.

I would go start off at Onsport University. And then go down to, Cape Town, and either use a veterinary referral hospital down there or the, SANAP, penguin rescue organisation, which is a wonderful organisation if you ever in Cape Town, do go and see them. And also Durban at the African Bird of Prey centre, and, and we, we did that tour, we did that for 3 years initially.

And it was really, really successful. We got the CPD approved by the South African Veterinary Council so that all the vets got their, their CPD points, and that was practical teaching that, you know, for me that was the thing that would really make the difference, so. Basically, we had a maximum class size of 16.

Every vet present had a cadaver, and they worked their way through from simple basic fractures to really complex things within a day. And the reality is none of that work is actually complicated, and you don't. Lots of fancy equipment either.

So it's cheap, it's easy to do, and the, the outcomes are really dramatic in terms of saving birds and getting them back to the air, or if they can't get back out, actually saving wings so they can be useful in in conservation breeding projects in captivity. So we did that and then more recently we've been doing some training on, what to do in a poisoning, situation. It's not uncommon for rangers and veterinary staff, state veterinary staff usually to be called to poisoning, Events, you know, some of these are terrible.

Let me just tell you about the, the, the, the awful, awful situation in 2020 in, Guinea-Bissau, there were 2000 hooded vultures killed by poisoning. And this is a species where there's less than 5000 anyway, and 2000 were lost in one event. And I know that's the problem that if you've got a carcass or maybe they put 3 or 4 carcasses around, you can kill a tremendous number of vultures, horribly quickly and, and to a point where they can't recover.

So it really is scary and what, what do you think are Potential, you know, solutions long term, what, what kind of, if you like, gives you some hope, to keep on working in this area. Well, yeah, I, I mean, it is, it is literally that because you look at it and you look at it logically and you say, well, we're just not going to save them. But you have to do what you can.

So there are a number of things that are being done. Firstly, and I think probably the most positive thing is, setting up, what is referred to as vulture restaurants. So these are safe feeding stations that vultures can use, and, and not get poisoned.

Now, just to explain, when a vulch, when a vulture is looking for food with data loggers and everything, GPS trackers, we now know that a vulture may fly 250 kilometres in a day to find a carcass. So, the, the problem is that even when we have a safe feeding station, if they see a poison carcass somewhere else, they, they may still get poison. But so they started off by setting up these feeding stations, and now they've got safe corridors and, and these are going.

Internationally, so they're going from one country through to another through to another. So they're actually, although they can't make the whole country safe, they are, they're trying to make areas where they can be safe, they can be, they can feed safely, they can be looked after, etc. Etc.

So that, that is the most positive thing, obviously, you know. We, we are helping, continue to help, by teaching local staff rehabilitation and, surgery and so on. One of the other things that's really, really important is setting up ex situ.

Ark populations of these endangered vultures. So, you know, it's already been done to an extent in South Africa, for example, Valpro have 180 flight impaired vultures that can't go back to the wild. But the reality is that in Africa, you have, you have rampant avian influenza, you have West Nile virus, pseudovirus, all sorts of things going on that can just wipe them out.

And if those vultures are all in one place, that's actually, it makes them very, very vulnerable. So what we need to do is actually set up populations of these species, and it's not just a question of having a dozen vultures, you've actually got to have a genetically diverse. Consistently reproductive, self-sustaining population.

So I've been working with the organisation in Wales, as something called the Manfred Horseman, the Manfred Horseman Vulture Conservation Trust, and I'm one of the trustees, it's a charity that's that's been set in, in, in mid Wales and We've actually been, going back to basics. We've been taking blood samples, we've done DNA analysis, we've got inbreeding coefficients of each individual bird, and we actually hold 10% of the global captive hooded vulture population. Now, remember, hooded vultures are one of the two most endangered species in Africa, predicted to be extinct by 2027.

So setting up these things and then maximising production working and we're working with other organisations throughout Europe, with bearded vultures and Siri vultures, the European black vulture and so on. So we're we're trying to do this and trying To get people to work together so that, and we're actually setting up a DNA laboratory at the Horseman Trust, so that we can actually, invite DNA samples from other vulture keepers, whether they be zoos or privately owned, it doesn't matter, so that we can actually maximise the positive conservation breeding and minimise the effect of some of the genetic bottlenecks that some of these species have gone through. So that's the other aspect of it is actually creating these long-term sustainable populations so that if the worst does happen, if we do leave either of those two species, the white-headed and hooded, that actually there are at least some in captivity.

That if we, if we then reach a point where the African environment is safe for them, they can then go back out again. To maybe finish with a story of hope, I, I didn't realise that you'd spent so much time at Slimbridge, but of course Peter Scott was famous for saving the Nei goose from Hawaii, and he bred it until it was suitable to take them back into Hawaii. So it's definitely an important part at the end that we do protect the vultures that we do have to make sure that we have something, you know, like Noah's Ark, to, to put these species back into where they, where they belong.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's, there's risks to them in the UK with AI and so on, but that's the whole point. You have some in the UK, some in Europe, some in America, some in Africa, so that overall, even if you lose one or two of those colonies, you still have enough to, to effect a a reintroduction at some point if you need to.

Neil, it's been great listening to you. It is a sad story. I, I am a man of hope, so I hope we can turn the African situation around in the way that we seem to be turning the Asian situation around, because these are majestic birds I was in, Canada and in Florida VMX a couple of weeks ago and to see turkey vultures flying, it's a beautiful sight.

It is, it's absolutely gorgeous. I mean, for me, any bird flying, but, but the, the vultures and the condors as well, you know, they're such big majestic birds, and they play such a vital role in the ecosystem. And, you know, we really do need, as a, as a humanity, we need to look after wildlife and to maintain our biodiversity and, and, you know, prevent the loss of any further species.

It's really important. And for those of you listening who don't know, WWT is one of our major bird charities. It's the Wildlife and Wetland Trust.

Slimbridge is definitely worth a visit. Absolutely, absolutely. And not just Slimbridge, there are 77 different centres around the UK.

Slimbridge, the Walfel and Wors Trust does tremendous research work, again, across the globe, in Asia, in Africa, the Madagascan orchard, for example. A species that was, yeah, was thought to be extinct, but, they actually found one pair breeding and they've been able to go out there and advise on, conservation breeding and, and, you know, it's doing quite nicely now, thank you. And the, spoon pill sandpiper from Russia and.

Yeah, and the European cranes that they've reintroduced into into Somerset now. So lots of fantastic, really, really good work that is done that really makes a difference. So, a, a good organisation to support, certainly.

We have one very close to us at Martin Mere, which is a few miles away from where I live. So, yeah, and I, I, I think I started, must have been one of their first ever visitors when they opened up in the early 70s. I used to jump on the bus from Liverpool and go out and spend the day bird watching around there.

So we, we will have to, if I'm in the neighbourhood, Neil, we can have a, a, a few hours at Slimbridge, that would be very, very good. Yeah, yeah. Great, that would be a good thing to look forward to.

Yeah, Neil, thank you so much and and thank you for all the really important work you're doing both, you know, on the ground in Africa, but also in this advocacy work you're doing because. Individuals are important, but changing, you know, the way that people think in government and also in industry is, is so important as well, so thank you and, and carry on the good work. Every single person can make a difference though, actually being aware that South African government is not protecting the wildlife in the way that they should be, as the owners of Eskom and, and, you know, sharing those thoughts with other people and publicising the plight of, of those that are suffering elsewhere in the world is really important, so please do your bit, all of you.

Because as vets, if we're not going to be shouting out for this, we can't expect the bankers and the lawyers to do it, can we? They weren't, they won't, no. Thank you so much, Neil.

Thank you for all the great work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.

Take care, Antony. Bye. Thanks everybody for listening.

I'm Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vet and this has been another episode of care.