VulPro

0216 Hartbeespoort

South Africa

Contact person: Kerri Wolter

+27-82-808-5113
+27 86 505 6470
kerri.wolter@gmail.com
http://www.vulpro.com
https://www.facebook.com/VulProAfrica/?ref=page_internal

Topics

• Environmental organization
• Environmental project
• Educational policy/project

• Volunteers are welcome.

About us

Vultures form an important ecological component of our natural environment, cleaning up dead carcasses and decreasing the spread of some diseases. The relationship between vultures and people is also a venerable one – vultures played roles in some early societies, including the Egyptian and the Hindu societies; vultures continue to be used as symbols or metaphors in modern societies; and vulture body parts are used in muthi.

Today, vultures face an unprecedented onslaught from human activities. They have to cope with electrocutions and collisions with electrical structures, poisonings, land-use changes, a decrease in food availability and exposure to toxicity through veterinary drugs, to list just a few of some of the challenges facing vultures today.

Vultures, positioned at the top of the food chain, are an indicator of the health of the environment below them – and dependent for their survival on a healthy environment. As such the work of the Vulture Conservation Programme’s (“VulPro”) work is intended and expected to impact on many other aspects of the environment – beyond vultures.

VulPro, established in 2007, approaches vulture conservation in an integrated, multidisciplinary fashion, with the benefits from the programme accruing to both vultures and society at large. VulPro combines education and good science, with networking, capacity building and knowledge generation.
The veterinary disciplines of toxicology, pharmacology, clinical pathology and medicine are combined with the science of cell-phone telemetry and the banking of genetic resources, with the goal being to positively influence the well-being of our natural resources to the ultimate benefit of society. In this regard, VulPro engages in a number of interrelated activities, and uses a variety of resources, in endeavouring to meet its objectives.

Objectives:
• Vulture rehabilitation
• Distribution, dispersal and foraging ranges of vultures
• Cliff and tree nesting vulture population monitoring and surveys
• Veterinary and ecological research related to vultures
• Cape Vulture breeding and supplementation and reintroduction programme
• Vulture educational and awareness programmes

Our work
• GPS tracking devises are used to determine foraging and home ranges of a large number of vultures in Southern Africa.
• VulPro conducts and facilitates educational talks and interaction with both tame and wild vultures at the rehabilitation and educational centre in Hartbeespoort, and regionally, through the follow-up of vulture home range and feeding studies.
• Undertaking and publishing studies determining drug residues in carcasses, and lobbying communities and society for appropriate actions to be taken to benefit our natural environment and to ameliorate the effects of drugs on vultures are part of VulPro’s work.
• With the many threats vultures are facing throughout Southern Africa, vulture rehabilitation has become an essential part of the work of VulPro. Collecting grounded, injured, poisoned and disabled vultures around South Africa, special emphasis within the Gauteng, North West and Limpopo Provinces, VulPro is able to save many vultures that would otherwise have met untimely deaths.
• VulPro operates the only facility approved by Gauteng Nature Conservation and recognised by North West Nature Conservation for vulture rehabilitation.

This multidisciplinary and networking programme looks at conservation holistically, by focusing on the vulture at the top of the food chain and gaining new knowledge on the environment below and so also impacting on society’s well-being.

Kerri Wolter is the Founder, Director and CEO of VulPro.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.