£4,910 raised at the Tropical Butterfly House for critically endangered Vultures

Thanks to donations from visitors, The Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife & Falconry Centre in North Anston, Sheffield has raised £4,910 for the Hawk Conservancy Trust’s International Vulture Programme. The impressive sum was raised during the Animal and Bird Displays over the centres special summer event, Amazing Animals Superheroes. The Tropical Butterfly House and the Hawk Conservancy Trust would like to greatly thank visitors for helpuing to riase such a fantastic amount.

The Hawk Conservancy Trust donated an African White-backed Vulture named Zulu to the centre in July of last year. Zulu has a great character and is loved by the staff due to his gentle nature; he can be seen running after staff, even coming to help them clean his enclosure! Now 3 years old, Zulu shares a home with Marley the Mynah Bird, and two Von Der Decken’s Hornbills named Bill and Vonda. 

Zulu now star's in the centre’s Animal and Bird Displays, taking place at 12:30pm and 14:45pm daily, which will include the centres special upcoming Halloween and Christmas event shows. 

Zulu is an ambassador for the International Vulture Programme run by the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Southern Africa and South Asia. The conservation and research work of these programmes covers six vulture species, including the African White-backed Vulture.

Unfortunately, The African White-backed Vulture species has rapidly decreased in the wild owing to habitat loss and conversion to agro-pastoral systems, declines in wild ungulate populations, hunting for trade, persecution, collisions and poisoning.
This decline could have a serious devastating effect; diseases such as rabies and bubonic plague, for which dogs and rats respectively are the primary source of, may increase as a consequence of vulture declines. Wildlife and livestock could also be at increased risk from dog and ratborne pathogens.
In India, rising cases of human anthrax due to handling infected carcasses or consuming poorly cooked meat of infected livestock are believed to be linked to the precipitous decline of vultures.

Sadly this year Zulu’s species has been upgraded from endangered to critically endangered which makes this funding all the more important and large amounts like this raised all the better.

Andrew Reeve is the Centre Manager and Curator at the popular wildlife attraction “We are hugely grateful to our visitors for raising this money, they can be confident that their money is going to make a real difference to this important cause. The Hawk Conservancy Trust are doing great work in monitoring and investigating aspects of Vulture ecology. They have started work on an anti-poisoning strategy in South Africa and a large part of the money raised will go towards supplying and distributing poison response kits, and related training”