This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Slaughterhouses are places most people never want to go, and might seem like unlikely places to search for rare or endangered species. In West Africa, however, they are among the last places one can find a critically endangered species, the Hooded Vulture, which historically thrived as a human commensal species, living in close proximity to people and contributing to waste disposal.
In recent decades, however, people have transformed so much of the landscape that few undisturbed natural areas remain, wildlife populations have plummeted, and slaughterhouses are now among the few places vultures can reliably find food. In parts of West Africa, it used to be common to see more than a hundred vultures standing sentry in a single tree beside a slaughterhouse. On a recent field research project in Ghana, however, I visited a huge slaughterhouse on top of a hill, where so many cattle were slaughtered that their blood ran down the hillside in a constant stream, guided by gutters and channels to the marsh below.
There was enough discarded carrion there to make a feast for hundreds of birds, but we found only a single Hooded Vulture, who fled the moment we approached, spreading its wings to their full 6-foot span as it circled up over the slaughterhouse and away into the bright midday sky. Vultures face habitat loss, food shortages due to wildlife declines, electrocution and poisoning, but a major driver of their declines in West Africa is persecution for use in West African Vodun (voodoo) rituals. Across West Africa, vultures are hunted, often with poison or traps set at slaughterhouses, for trade to buyers who believe sacrificing vultures will protect them from evil or improve their success in business or politics.
In Badou, Togo, for example, near the border with Ghana, past records noted over 60 Hooded Vultures roosting in a single tree, but when our team arrived to count them, there were none to be found. Local residents told us poachers had used meat baited with fishhooks to trap and kill them all. In the heart of Africa, however, Chad is considered a potential stronghold for critically endangered African vultures, but there has been very little information on actual numbers of vultures in Chad, or local knowledge about them—until now.
In an effort to change this, my Chadian colleague Djekillamber Djekadjim recently spent six months assessing vultures at 10 slaughterhouses and a landfill in N'Djamena, Chad's capital, and four surrounding towns. He counted vultures at each site and interviewed 93 butchers, farmers, herders, traditional healers, and ministry officials about local attitudes toward vultures and the threats they face. His findings and our analysis were published in the journal Frontiers in Bird Science and reveal a number of surprises, including some causes for concern.
At over half—six of the 11 surveyed sites—there were no vultures at all. The other five sites hosted between two and 33 birds, far fewer than a high of 83 birds our team counted at a single slaughterhouse in northern Togo. Based on our count data, we estimated a total of 113 hooded vultures across all of N'Djamena and the surrounding area.
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