Madeline Bodin – Yale environment360: “Vultures are being killed on an unprecedented scale across Africa, with the latest slaughter perpetrated by elephant poachers who poison the scavenging birds so they won’t give away the location of their activities. In July 2013, roughly 600 vultures died after scavenging a dead elephant that had been poisoned near Namibia’s Bwabwata National Park. In the savannahs of East Africa and southern Africa, there has been an estimated 50 to 60 percent decline in vultures. In the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, four species of large vultures declined 98 percent outside of protected areas over 35 years, according to Jean-Marc Thiollay of France’s Laboratory of Ecology and Evolution in Paris.”