African Wildlife & Environment Issue 81

GOOD READS

magazines. In March 1979 Peter Mundy, Russel Friedman and I attended the First International Symposium on Vultures at the Natural History Museum in Santa Barbara, California. At that time, the California Condor was heading towards extinction in the wild, while vultures in Africa and Asia were deemed to be numerous and in no trouble whatsoever. Since then, the California Condor has been brought back from the brink of extinction through an extraordinary captive breeding effort by the Americans, with the few remaining condors in the wild all being brought into the programme, and the birds have now been re-introduced to several areas of their historic range. Meanwhile, vulture populations in Africa and Asia have crashed, and many of them are now considered to be endangered species. How did this dramatic reversal happen? In India and Pakistan, millions of vultures died when they consumed the carcasses of domestic animals that had been treated with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory veterinary drug that is also used by humans in the form of 'Voltaren'. In Africa, large numbers of birds have been poisoned to obtain their body parts for traditional medicine and magic, others have been poisoned by poachers who do not want their nefarious deeds to be advertised by wheeling columns of vultures, many are killed and injured by electrocution or collisions with powerlines and, more recently, the wind farms that are allegedly going to save us from the 'climate crisis' are killing vultures with their turbine blades and the powerlines built in remote areas to extract this 'green' electricity. This book is a dramatic panorama of the African vultures, displaying their sheer power, grace, and characters. It is an art gallery of the finest photographs ever recorded for this group of irreplaceable scavengers, who clean the countryside of dead and decaying bodies. It is an ode to these wonderful birds, that "E'en when bloody, have done no creature harm!" VulPro, the publisher of this fine book, is a non-profit organisation that works tirelessly for the well-being of vultures. The publication is a show-case and fund-raiser for their various conservation, rehabilitation and captive breeding programmes. A visit to VulPro to see their wonderful vultures, many of which have been

permanently maimed and cannot be released back into the wild, is a moving experience. And time sent in the hide at their vulture restaurant, watching the wild Cape Vultures dropping out of the sky and rending a carcass to the bare bones in the shortest time, is an African wildlife ritual that will take your breath away. This book may sound expensive, but you will treasure it as long as you live, and by purchasing a copy you will be helping VulPro with their very good works. Check their website to learn more: https://www.vulpro.com/ Grass

Martins, Dino J (2022). Grasses of East Africa. Struik Nature, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town. Soft cover, 15 x 21 cm, 232 pp, illustrated in colour throughout with photographs, sketches and a habitat map. ISBN 978-1- 77584 -584-5. RRP R300.

This is a wonderful book authored by a very talented scientist and naturalist. Dr Dino Martins is a Kenyan entomologist and evolutionary biologist with a PhD from Harvard University. He is a research scholar and lecturer in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, and executive director of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya where he teaches and mentors students. His research interests focus on the interactions between insects, plants and fungi. He is also an accomplished photographer and artist; the only other photographer mentioned is Anne E Powys, so I suspect that most of the images are those of Dr Martins. The introductory pages deal with the economic significance of grasses. They are, of course, the most economically important group of plants on earth. Besides feeding the planet's burgeoning human population with wheat, rice and maize, they support animal husbandry and wildlife populations. Grasses also soften

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