How Pesticide Misuse Is Killing Africa’s Wildlife | National Geographic

throughout Africa people are using
poisons as weapons to kill wildlife and
pesticides are the most common ones as
human populations across the continent
continue to grow farmers and herders
compete with animals for shrinking land
and resources farmers must safeguard
their crops and chimps and elephants
herders kill lions and leopards and
retaliation for eating their cattle
people have small animals like doves and
ducks for meat but instead of killing
them with guns or traps some have
resorted to using inexpensive and deadly
insecticides and herbicides what they
may not know is that this causes a
disastrous trickle-down effect into the
rest of the ecosystem
when herders add poison to carcasses
used to bait Lions the same carcasses
may be eaten by vultures and eagles
which themselves are then poisoned when
villagers drop poison in a pond to kill
fish and ducks for food other animals
like otters and hippos drink that water
and die when farmers sprinkle pesticides
on seeds and fruits used to bait
elephants other animals like storks and
insects also eat the poison food and
people who consume poison to meat in
water without knowing it can get sick as
a result as you can see all of these
situations do not only affect the
targeted animals but end up harming so
many others as collateral damage but
where do the pesticides come from some
are manufactured in the United States
and others come from India and China
these lethal synthetic formulas made
with carbo furin and carbo sulfon are
banned in many parts of the world but
they’re sold legally for agricultural
purposes in Africa where they’re widely
available as over-the-counter products
in key
at stores human demands are always
increasing so poisonings are likely to increase too