Bad luck for vultures

last updated 8 January 2015

Johannesburg

A dramatic drop in the vulture population is being blamed on South Africa’s biggest boom industry—gambling. State-sponsored lotteries have become a national craze, especially among the poor, and dreams of wealth are sending peasants to medicine men for good-luck charms. A traditional potion made of ground-up vulture bones and skulls is believed to endow people with the power to see into the future, and conservation officials say hundreds of vultures have been slaughtered. A recent survey found that 72 percent of South Africans gamble, and that the poor spend more than 10 percent of their meager incomes on lottery tickets. “Maybe the lottery is one of the worst things that has happened to our country,” says conservationist Gerhard Verdoorn. “It’s causing a lot of general poverty, and now we have an impact on wildlife as well.”