The following report is on the website of the Animal Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town (
http://adu.org.za/index.php)
What impact does the recently reported hunting of Amur Falcons in India have on South Africa? The original news item, written by Conservation India, has the title Shocking Amur Falcon massacre in Nagaland and you can read it here. Shashank Dalvi and Ramki Sreenivasan, who authored the report, summarize it as follows: "This is a documentation of the shocking massacre of tens of thousands of migratory Amur falcons Falco amurensis in the remote state of Nagaland in India's northeast. We estimate that during the peak migration 12 000–14 000 birds are being hunted for consumption and commercial sale everyday. We further estimate that a mind-boggling 120,000 to 140,000 birds are being slaughtered in Nagaland every year during their passage through the state." This photograph was provided by Conservation India, and shows Amur Falcons plucked and ready for market.
In a new paper in Ornithological Observations, Henk Bouwman and Hanneline du Plessis, University of North-West in Potchefstroom, plus Craig Symes at the University of Witwatersrand, point out that termite alates are an important part of the diet of Amur Falcons while they are in their non-breeding grounds in South Africa. They discuss the implications of termites for ecosystem functioning in general and agriculture in particular. They remind us: "Termites are landscape engineers. Effects on their numbers might effectively alter ecosystem functioning at the landscape level. Each breeding pair of alates could establish one nest, producing thousands of termites that consume much vegetation biomass (fresh or dead) over many years. A reduction in avian predation on termites would presumably increase the number of termite colonies and therefore increase pressure on agriculture, rangelands, and wooden constructions."
Henk and co-authors watched Amur Falcons catching alates during an emergence, and estimated that each falcon caught 250 alates, which weighed 22 g. Using this information, they made a series of estimates. "Assuming that 130 000 less birds reach Africa and if each bird experiences only one emergence while here for four months, this means that 32.5 million alates weighing 2 893 kg will not be consumed." At a population level, they made this estimate: "Assuming a global population of 1 million birds, all wintering in Africa, produces astounding numbers. 250 million alates representing 22 tons of biomass could be consumed for only one emergence per bird. For 10 emergences, 2.5 billion alates at 223 tons of biomass could be consumed. For comparison, a 747 jet weighs about 272 tons."
Download the paper from the Ornithological Observations website. It is called "How to make 2.5 billion termites disappear? A case for protecting the Amur Falcon Falco amurensis. The URL at which you can download the pdf of the paper is at
http://oo.adu.org.za/content.php?id=69. This the 69th paper in Ornithological Observations, and you can browse the contents of the 2012 volume, which is the third volume, at
http://oo.adu.org.za/content.php?vol=3. If you have an interesting ornithological observation to report, then there are guidelines for authors on the Ornithological Observations website at oo.adu.org.za.
Ornithological Observations is an ejournal published by BirdLife South Africa and the Animal Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town.
