Understanding demand and supply dynamics for international trade in endangered vultures in Kano and Jigawa States, Nigeria

Abstract

Trabajo Fin de Máster Propio. Tutor: Yoila David Malann. As man estimates the exponential growth in his fellow human species populations, in contrast he calculates the speed of wildlife species disappearance and extinction. Wildlife (including plants and their derivatives) are exploited to meet demands in illegal markets that are both domestic and international. There are well documented literatures on conservation, ecology, habitat distribution, population, and trade of vultures in Nigeria. however, most of the previous literatures on vulture trade in Nigeria overlooked the extent to which demand for international trade in vulture specimen matches supply and efficacy of the trade control at both domestic and international level. This work reviewed the available published literature in the scientific journals, technical reports including thesis and dissertations on African-Eurasian vulture species which affirmed the ambiguous nature of the west African vulture catastrophic decline because of factors that included trade in the species specimen to satisfy several traditional and belief-based systems at both domestic and international level. The primary data of this work was gathered using semi structured interviews and structured (questionnaire or predetermined questions) organized based on the research objectives, the Excel, Special Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and R Project for Statistical Computing (R-PSC) software were used to arrange and analyse the data respectively. Information collected from 50 selected local community stake holders indicated that hunters, wildlife traders and traditional herbalist constituted 50% of the category of people in demand for vulture specimen The findings shows that trade in vulture trade specimen is very high with 68% of the respondents directly or indirectly engaged in supply and or prescribing vulture specimen, it was also discovered that about 80% of the interviewee refused to categorically disclose the actual cost of vulture specimen, only few 20% disclosed the range of the cost of the whole live vulture falling between 200,000 and 500,000 naira. The traditional hunters reported that apart from the body parts specimens, anything associated with vultures including nest and freshly laid eggs are being used either alone or as important ingredients in traditional medicine. The result further indicated that 34% of the respondents expressed the fact that the cost of vulture specimen is dynamic, the prices per specimen varies ranging from two hundred thousand naira to as high as three million naira depending on the intensity of the demand and the availably of specimen in need, 60% were on believe that meeting the demand in vulture specimen is not easy. The result also found out that vultures have disappeared in the study area, about 40.6 % of the specimen are however either sourced elsewhere in the countries geopolitical zones like north central and southern Nigeria while 21.8 % from cross borders like Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. Traders and hunters accounted for 23.4%, the demand and supply are not species specific and the respondents were on the believe that vulture and wildlife trade is not sustainable. The result generally revealed mismatch in the supply and demand for transaction in vulture specimen across the research area. Further data collected from 45 heterogeneous relevant enforcement agencies also revealed a strong effect (SW= 0.880, AIC = 724) of the enforcement organizations on the level of knowledge of stakeholders’ ability to control trade in vultures which indicated that relevant agencies for wildlife enforcement and Airport/border control law enforcement organizations needs to be prioritizing the training of their personnel to improve their understanding of the importance of vultures as well as overall wildlife conservation and trade regulations, the findings showed that irrespective of locations or organizations, the importance of Nigerian domesticated CITES regulations (ESA) for wildlife conservation received strong perceptive support from the associated law enforcement agencies in Kano and Jigawa States, Nigeria (SW= 0.895, AIC = 494.4). However, the conservation priorities and trade control of vultures showed a non-significant pattern with locations in Kano State, which may indicate the peculiarity of vulture trade and conservation across Northern Nigeria. Though the management and intervention level of vulture conservations revealed a strong effect (SW= 0.880, AIC = 724) of organizations on the intervention levels for vultures’ conservation, suggesting that border control law enforcement organizations might be prioritizing different protection levels for vultures’ conservation status other than the one contained (Schedule I) in the Nigerian domesticated CITES regulations (ESA).