We are very excited that the CBS program 60 minutes featuring the Lion Guardians will be shown on TV in the US this Sunday March 29th at 7pm Eastern Time. It will also be available to watch on the internet at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml soon after. The program is all about wildlife poisoning, and Bob Simon and his team came to the Chyulu Hills to find out about lion poisoning in our area and how we work to stop wildlife being killed.
Wildlife poisoning is an extremely urgent issue – it is very easy and cheap to buy the agricultural pesticide carbofuran (Furadan) and sadly it can easily kill any animal you would like it to. Many people in Maasailand are using it to kill carnivores, and we have even heard reports that it has been used by a man to kill his father.
Across Kenya there are more and more cases of wildlife, especially carnivores, being killed with poison. It is also destroying vulture populations, as they feast on poisoned carcasses too.
We are very glad that CBS 60 minutes visited Kenya to highlight this important issue, and we hope that the program will make people sit up and listen. Our hope is that no one will be able to buy this substance anymore, and it will be replaced in shops with a pesticide that cannot be used to kill wildlife.
Have a look at our web page on lion poisoning on the Living with Lions website: http://www.livingwithlions.org/lion-poisoning.html, and please tell all your friends to watch 60 minutes. Thank you!
Looking forward to watching the show this Sunday. I sure do hope that poison will be outlawed, and those heavily fined if caught using black market Furadan.
thanks for letting us know. i have been watching 60 minutes for over 20 years. hell, it and i are getting old together! the 60 minutes crew should have gone to the poison making plant and its owner/manager and confront them with this lion or other wildlife poisoning problem Kenya now is facing. and i also hope they went to the government and its officials to confront them with this increasing problem which can destroy Kenya’s safari tourism business.
Without the pesticide the crops that are used for food would probably be destored. I am sure the people killing these lions are doing it illigally for the money. If the product was used responsibly and the label read there would not be a probably. Since the people killing the lions are not worrying about labels, just money, they are not about to read labels. I say go after the culprets killing the animals and not the company or people trying to provide food for the people in all parts of the world by helping them grow pest free crops. If the people who advocate this thought as much about people as animals, it would be a much better world. People are starving but do they worry about that? No.
In response to Anne, I am sure it is possible to produce an insecticide which kills only insects, not large mammals. True, the products should be used responsibly, but the greater resposibility lies with the company supplying these powerful chemicals, and also to legal systems which allow their sale to customers without the need of a licence for their use.
anne, you are so wrong about this issue of letting the pesticide making and profit driven company go freely because this chemical is illegal in other countries because the governments know it is very harmful to both people as well as animals alike! we do not need or farmers do not need chemicals or at least such toxic chemicals to keep their crops!
let’s not put animals against people. because we all damn well know that people will always win. and this is why we are having the population problem! please educate yourself a little! we as a species are consuming more than the planet and its resources can produce! precisely one and a half time more than the planet and all resources including water!
survival of the fittest , this law does not apply to most people. therefore we have any idiots or destructive people who are more harmful or deadly to human societies than any man killing snakes, sharks or big cats combined. using pesticide is so common now because of the big chemical companies that have been advertising their products successfully to farmers ( small or large ). they do not do it because they love and care for those starving people. trust me!
sauwah, you are so right! There is no need to use make a pesticide so deadly that it will kill a large mammal. Since it has no taste or odor, it would certainly be easy to put it in a stew for a spouse you wanted to get rid of! What if toddlers got into this? Pretty, blue stuff. Great for a child to put in their mouth!
I’m glad you mentioned a population problem. So many people are terrified to mention this. I lived in L.A., Calif. for a long time and people are taking over all of the territory that belongs to animals and then they get mad because coyotes eat their pets. They build their houses in coyote territory on the mountainsides and when it rains their houses slide down the slopes or in dry weather burn up in a forest fire, and they wonder why. Those areas were made for animals, not people!!
Anyway, it is the animals who are endangered and manufacturing this kind of an insecticide is unforgivable!
Hashi Hanta
Choctaw
living in the
Tohono O’odham Nation
Arizona
Antony, I saw you on CBS tonight. A true movie star!!! I hope that people will be so angry to learn about this horrible pesticide that something can be done about it. I wonder if it would be possible to sue the company every time an animal — any animal or bird — dies from this poison. An excellent, international attorney might be able to do something about this.
I have participated in (and won) some lawsuits that I don’t think had as much merit as this case. Might be something to think about…
Anyway, I called friends all over the country to have them watch tonight and you really were wonderful!
Hashi
Hashi – thank you so much! I too hope something can be done about this, and I am glad the Lion Guardians were able to bring the problem to the eyes of the public.
hashi-hanti
thank you for your comment. i miss california since i now reside in las vegas. i lived there over 30 years. most in the la. area where i have seen so many more cars over the past years. hate it! yes, we as a species are producing to a point where we are either consuming or destroying so much from this planet that we are slowing extincting ourselves in the long run.
as a species, all we have been doing are taking, taking and taking. and have never giving anything benefiting to other living creatures or the planet back. some conservationists who want to give other earthlings a voice are always demonized by the powerful profit seeking companies, the media they own or control and the so called conservatives ( people whose good living is owed to big companies under the falsehood of free market ). since when any thing is truly free? clean air? clean water? virgin land and forests? and wildlife? and these free clean things are being destroyed or hunted for profits or seen as wasteland or worse vermin.
speaking of coyotes taking pets. i saw one footage where a man was calling a mountain lion a murderer because the lion had taken his dog. behind his crying face, i saw wilderness. i do not see some dog owners who live in south central crying over a lion taking their dogs and calling an american native animal a murderer! that lion was doing what had to do to live! this land was his/hers before any domestic dog ever set its paws or any white man ever set foot on this wonderful and bountiful land! there were over 100,000 grizzlies and rivers used to fill with salmons! over a million of buffaloes and mountain lions were spread from the west coast to the east!
the wealthy and royal europeans killed all big games in europe, therefore they turned to africa for the big five. sadly, they still do. only now their kill is guaranteed by canned hunting farms or by professional hunters ( killers ).
in short, you are so right!
[…] I’m feeling a little high now, we want to thank Anthony Kasanga and all the other the lion guardians for telling the story so poignantly, and of course for saving our lions. We also thank Martion […]