Author: Guardian of the Wilderness
Title: Alpine vultures as big as sheep on the prairie
Filming location: Gansu Gannan and Sichuan Ruoerge junction
When: June 2019
Species: Alpine vulture
Alpine vulture (Gyps himalayensis): Is a bird of the Falcon family Hawk family, a large bird of prey with a body length of more than 100 cm. The plumage varies greatly in color , with the head and neck bare , sparsely covered with a few stained yellow or white hair-like feathers , and the long tufts of feathers at the base of the neck are lanceolate , pale yellow or yellowish brown. The upperparts and wings coverts are pale yellowish brown and the flight feathers are black. The underparts are pale white or pale yellowish brown, and the pale underparts and black wings contrast in stark contrast to the flying underparts. The juveniles are dark brown with pale feathers.
Alpine vultures are national level II protected wild animals, and as scavengers, they are important "scavengers" in the ecosystem. Without alpine vultures to remove animal carcasses from grasslands, dangerous bacteria can breed on carcasses, potentially infecting humans and other animals. So vultures are an integral part of the natural environment and, like other birds of prey, are an important part of the food chain. It is distributed in Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang and other regions in China.
In recent decades, due to food shortages, drug poisoning, human hunting and other reasons, the number of vultures has experienced a huge decline. If the population continues to decline, it will cause a series of major ecological, economic and social losses, and vultures play a huge role in maintaining ecosystem stability and biodiversity.
Listed as a protected animal in the CitesII level of the Washington Convention, effective year: 1997.
Listed on the IUCN's 2017 Red List of Threatened Species ver 3.1 – Near Threatened (NT).
Listed in the Red Book of Endangered Animals in China: Rare Effective Year: 1996
It is included in the "List of Wild Animals under National Key Protection in China" at the second level.
The picture above is the alpine vulture feathers and claws cracked by the Shidian Forest Public Security in Baoshan City, Yunnan Province, the picture comes from the Network, the Shidian Forest Public Security in Baoshan City, Yunnan Province cracked a case of hunting and killing of exceptionally important wild animals, and the wild animals and products seized at the scene were all over the place, including 26 live alpine vultures, 9 pairs of alpine vulture claws and 35 bundles of feathers (1 bundle of feathers 100, from a dry alpine vulture), equivalent to 35 alpine vultures, and 1 golden eagle (national level), The number of raptors involved was at least 62.
More than 60 alpine vultures in Shidian, Yunnan Province, were poached and are just the tip of the iceberg. It is not just a simple poaching problem, because some people's ostentation or other psychological habits have produced a chain of interests: the feathers of some precious birds of prey or other birds can be used as ornaments, claws and bones can be made into crafts such as pendants, saying that they can ward off evil spirits...
There are specialized poaching, there are acquisitions of deep processing and sales, there are customer groups that buy, and of course, there are Internet platforms to support their transactions, before we launched the e-commerce no wild action for the e-commerce platform to have raptor products of the commodity has been advocated, the e-commerce platform has basically removed these goods.
People who are not afraid of wildlife and wilderness are terrible ignorance and greed. People who spend money on these wild animals and plants are even more frightening, a terrible habit that destroys humanity.