VULTURES NEED YOU

Yes, they really do and for the sake of humanity’s health, we need to help.

This is an appeal to your head, not your heart. Vultures need you. That’s right, those ungainly, clumsy birds who survive by eating the kills of other animals, are almost extinct. Please help me save them. It may be hard to believe but the fate of thousands of other animals and our own health depend upon them.

Poachers don’t want hundreds of circling vultures pointing authorities towards recently-killed elephants or rhinos, so they target the birds by lacing other animal carcasses with poisons.

In South Africa, in just 15 years, the vulture population has dropped by 80 per cent, mostly through poisoning. In Namibia, more than 500 vultures were poisoned in just one tragedy.

Vultures have a bad public image, but the truth is they play a vital role in controlling disease. They have a unique digestive system capable of dissolving anthrax, botulism and cholera. Basically, they eat disease. They control populations of blowfly larvae, rats, feral dogs and other scavengers. They ultimately make the world cleaner and healthier.

Less competition for carcasses caused India’s feral dog population to explode. This caused higher rates of rabies transmission. Thousands of people and animals died. Now India is desperate to get vultures back.

In South Africa, I still have a chance to save them. My team is working with the country’s Endangered Species Protection Trust to use aerial reconnaissance to discover where vultures breed areas, and then protect the babies.

I am earnestly pleading for your help for a creature that’s got a bad deal and almost no hope. This situation is so sad and so important that I have promised to help. Will you stand with me and make a donation? It would be the kind thing to do for the birds.

For the animals,

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