Save our Vultures

Vultures: Sentinels of the Skies

Often disliked and misunderstood, vultures are nature’s clean-up crew, vital to keeping ecosystems healthy and preventing the spread of disease. Feared because of superstition and deliberately poisoned by poachers trying to hide their crimes, these remarkable birds have become victims of both ignorance and human greed.

In some of my artwork, I have used torn fragments of newspaper reports and photographs to document a mass vulture poisoning in the Kruger National Park. The ripped edges echo the violence of the loss, while the fragments themselves speak of lives reduced to newsprint — easily overlooked, quickly forgotten. It is both ironic and deeply sad that the very birds that help sustain life are killed for doing exactly what nature intended them to do.

When the sentinels of the skies are silenced, something greater than birds is lost. A vital part of the natural world disappears — and with it, a little of our own humanity.