Botswana’s vultures may be ugly ducklings of the wildlife economy but they are quietly doing business worth more than US$250 million a year across Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, according to research by economists and conservation specialists affiliated with Leibniz University Hannover, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, BirdLife International and the Foundation for Sustainable Development.
The study, Total Economic Vulture: The Value of Ecosystem Services Provided by Vultures in Southern Africa, puts a price on an animal that rarely makes the tourism brochure cover but apparently has an impressive balance sheet.
The researchers estimate that vultures generate more than US$250 million in annual ecosystem services across the three countries, with the value rising to about US$1.8 billion across SADC.
Much of that value comes from work that would otherwise require somebody, probably at considerable cost, to do the dirty work.
Existence and bequest values account for 54.5 percent of the total, while sanitation and pest control contribute 37 percent. In simple terms, vultures clean up carcasses, help control potential disease risks and keep the ecosystem moving.
Their sentinel role contributes another 4.5 percent, while material uses account for 3 percent. Waste disposal adds 0.8 percent and nature-based tourism 0.2 percent.
The numbers give a different perspective on Botswana’s wildlife economy. While lions attract cameras and elephants attract tourists, vultures provide what could be described as free environmental outsourcing – removing carcasses without sending an invoice.
The researchers estimate that failing to act on vulture conservation could result in welfare losses of almost US$47 million annually, compared with welfare gains of nearly US$30 million from conservation action.
For Botswana, the message is unusually commercial: the bird most people would probably not invite to dinner may already be one of the ecosystem’s most reliable unpaid contractors.