A chronicling of long-standing carbofuran use and its menace to wildlife in Kenya - Carbofuran and Wildlife Poisoning: Global Perspectives and Forensic Approaches - page 66

Figure 3.11 Poachers being educated about birds and their values
Photo taken by Martin Odino
we were confronted by the widely held and virtually unshakeable belief that Furadan-poisoned bird
meat is 'detoxifi ed' by roasting or hanging prior to consumption.
Since no human mortality cases that could be directly linked to pesticide poisoning have yet
manifested themselves, the locals were not appreciably convinced that consuming birds poisoned
with Furadan was signifi cantly harmful to them. We were often told that 'nobody reads the labels'
and, if we told anyone (poachers included) that they should not touch the compound with their bare
hands they essentially said: 'we have been touching it since before you were born and we are not
dead yet'. Nonetheless, some poachers were persuaded to change to vegetable farming, using the
abundant water resource from River Nzoia and receding waters of the customary annual fl oods in
the area after the PI (M. Odino) enumerated the advantages of farming over poaching.
Regular blogging on the WildlifeDirect platform at http://stopwildlifepoisoning.wildlifedirect.
org/ and http://baraza.wildlifedirect.org/ as the study progressed helped raise the international profi le
and visibility of this issue. The timing of the study also coincided with the airing of the '60 Minutes'
segment on a major American television network and the subsequent buy-back offer by FMC, the
manufacturer of Furadan.
While the product is now scantily available in most agrovet shops, it remains available both in
Kenya and adjoining countries. Monthly updates on Furadan-associated bird mortality at the study
site were made available to other stakeholders, namely the Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS), Nature
Kenya (Birdlife International's local partner), Crop Life Kenya (formerly Agrochemicals Association
of Kenya (AAK)) and the PCPB. Talks between conservationists, particularly WildlifeDirect, and
PCPB following a government ministerial (Agriculture) directive to look into the case are underway
in an attempt to better regulate Furadan and other potentially deadly pesticides. Unfortunately, this
venture does not seem to have moved forward very much.