Please, can we count on your support today? It’s vitally important.

Vultures are victims of poisoning and the evil bushmeat trade. Vulture feet, heads and other body parts are widely available in markets throughout Africa. Vulture brains are dried, ground up, and then smoked in cigarettes which supposedly give the users visions of the future.

Vultures who evade the meat trade are at enormous risk of poisoning. Livestock owners use deadly poisoned bait to kill them. Vultures feed on these carcasses, putting hundreds and thousands at risk of death.

Vultures may not be the most beautiful of creatures, but they play an important ecological role and the consequences of wiping them out are enormous. And they are going fast. Of the 22 vulture species, nine are critically endangered, three are endangered and four are near threatened.

Vultures are being wiped off the face of the earth!

Vultures are even more threatened than rhinos and elephants. In the past 30 years, vulture populations have dropped by 62%. A 2015 study at 67 markets in 12 West African countries, found that vultures accounted for 41% of the bush meat on sale. Twenty-seven percent of them were categorized as Near Threatened, Vulnerable or Endangered.

It is estimated that 2.2-million pounds (one million kilograms) of wild animal meat is traded each year. A significant percentage of these are vultures.

In Botswana, 600 vultures died after eating one poisoned elephant carcass. In Guinea-Bissau over 2,000 hooded vultures were poisoned in one of the largest mass vulture killings in the world.

Not only is this extermination pointless and cruel, it is dangerous for human health. Their unique digestive system is capable of dissolving anthrax, botulism and cholera. ¨

Vultures need your help. ASI supports The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) which carries out rescue missions and treats poisoned vultures. The situation is so grave that help is desperately needed. Right now, we need to raise $2,000 (£1,500) for emergency life-saving medical equipment.

Your donation today will help save creatures that may not be beautiful on the outside, but are terribly endangered, vital to the environment and important for human health.