News

Photo: Neil Bowman / Getty Images / Canva

At least 30 vultures have died near Phuduhudu Village, neighbouring Nxai Pan National Park in Botswana, after feeding on a poisoned zebra carcass, according to Safari360 Botswana. The Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) is investigating. The poison was almost certainly placed to kill predators — lions, leopards, or hyenas preying on local livestock. The vultures paid the price instead.

A Pattern with Devastating Consequences
This is not an isolated incident. It is the latest in a long line of poisoning events that have pushed Africa’s vultures toward the brink. Around 60% of African vulture deaths are attributed to poisoning, and six of the continent’s eleven vulture species are now critically endangered. What is lost in minutes can take decades to recover — vultures raise just one chick a year, meaning a single event like this sets populations back by a generation.

Botswana has been here before. In June 2019, 537 vultures were poisoned near Chobe after poachers laced elephant carcasses with chemicals. In November 2022, 43 white-backed vultures were found dead after feeding on a poisoned zebra — the same scenario playing out again near Phuduhudu today. Across the continent, the scale is frequently catastrophic: a single poisoned carcass in South Africa’s Kruger National Park in May 2025 killed 123 vultures outright.

The LionAid Connection — and a Blueprint for Change
LionAid, the UK lion conservation charity, has long highlighted how poisoning predators rarely ends with the intended target. Vulture deaths and lion deaths are two sides of the same coin, and LionAid is doing something practical about it.

Our Merrueshi Human/Lion Conflict Mitigation Project in Kenya, bordering Amboseli National Park, offers a powerful model. The Merrueshi ecosystem comprises 58 Maasai villages whose livestock are highly vulnerable to predation by lions and other carnivores. Historically, every predation incident triggered retaliatory killings — a lose-lose cycle destroying both wildlife and community livelihoods.

LionAid’s solution, designed together with the Maasai themselves, centres on something beautifully simple: lights. Blinking solar-powered lights are fitted around the perimeter fences of villages to deter predators, dramatically reducing livestock losses. In return, households donate livestock to a community insurance herd, administered by village Elders, which compensates any family that does suffer a predation loss. Crucially, LionAid also installs solar household lights inside each home — many of which had never had any light after dark. Children can read their schoolbooks at night for the first time. Families feel safer. The association between protecting lions and tangible improvements in daily life begins to take hold.

LionAid has already equipped six manyattas with this system, with overwhelmingly positive feedback from communities. The reduction in retaliatory killings — of lions, predators, and the vultures that inevitably become collateral victims — is the direct result.

This is exactly the kind of proven, community-centred approach that is needed near Phuduhudu and across Botswana.

What Must Change
The DWNP investigation must lead to accountability. But beyond that, this incident is a reminder that wildlife poisoning will continue as long as communities living alongside predators have no meaningful safety net. LionAid’s Merrueshi initiative proves that with the right support, people and predators can coexist — and that protecting one means protecting the other.

Thirty vultures are dead near Nxai Pan. They were doing exactly what nature designed them to do. The crisis that killed them is entirely preventable.