Confronting culture to protect vultures: Interview with Nigeria’s Michael Williams

Known for their unique ability to polish off animal carcasses and minimize the potential for disease outbreaks, vultures are one of the most endangered bird groups on the planet today.  Around many parts of West Africa, especially Nigeria, their populations have plummeted, thanks largely to commercial poaching and traditional beliefs that prize vulture parts as vital ingredients for traditional medicine. Most of the historic resident species have been locally extirpated — and those remaining are declining sharply too.

Ornithologist Michael Manja Williams is no stranger to this decline in Nigeria’s wild vulture population. Growing up in Plateau State, Middle Belt Nigeria, Williams typically saw committees of vultures perched on rooftops in his community. “All of a sudden, we no longer saw them again,” he said. This disappearance would pique his curiosity, leading him on to many different research surveys across Nigerian states and eventually inspiring a lifelong career in vulture conservation.

A Ph.D. student at Nigeria’s Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Williams is currently the coordinator for endangered species conservation at Biota Conservation Hub Foundation, a nonprofit where he leads research on endangered bird species and wildlife animals. In a recent Zoom interview with Mongabay, Williams shared insights from his countrywide field studies, the present shift in the perception of vultures among younger generations, and why policy reforms and community-based conservation are essential in offsetting Nigeria’s diminished vulture numbers.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: What first drew you to vultures, considering that they are largely feared or perceived as dirty?

Michael Manja Williams: I became so fascinated with the issue of vultures when I realized that they were no longer seen as before. Back when I was growing up, there were lots of vultures around until some years back. I’m actually a teacher by training; I have a master’s in biology education. Because of my curiosity to investigate further on vultures, I decided to delve into conservation biology. So my master’s research was on vultures, and my Ph.D. also delves deeper into vultures. I observed that vultures are gradually going into extinction, and I felt like something needed to be done to bring them back.

Mongabay: How long have you been studying vultures?

Michael Manja Williams: I’ve been studying vultures for 9-10 years now.

Mongabay: How was your interest in saving Nigeria’s vultures received by local communities?

Michael Manja Williams: I met a lot of people from different communities when I was researching vultures. Some found it fascinating in the sense, ‘What’s good about vultures that somebody needs to study?’ So when I tell them I’m a Ph.D. student, they are like, ‘What? So you have nothing better to study but vultures?’

In some communities that have negative perceptions of vultures — as witches, wizards and all those things — they think [vultures] aren’t worth anyone studying . We don’t even need them. So a lot of people see you as kind of weird. Why would you be studying something like that? But when you talk to them and make them see reasons why we need vultures in our environment, some of them tend to understand.

Mongabay: Why are vultures locally perceived as witches and wizards?

Michael Manja Williams: My interactions with local communities revealed several deeply rooted traditional beliefs. Because vultures feed on carcasses, including human remains where available, many people associate them with death and perceive them as possessing supernatural powers.

In many rural communities and traditional belief systems in West Africa, witches are believed to have spiritual powers that enable them to kill or harm people and spiritually consume their bodies. Since hooded vultures [Necrosyrtes monachus] are obligate scavengers that depend entirely on meat, some people believe that the presence of vultures in a community will bring about illnesses and mysterious deaths. In this worldview, vultures are not merely associated with death; they are thought to cause it.

In some local communities in Plateau state, people also believe that vultures are linked to wars and conflicts. They think that vultures bring about human conflicts so that people will kill one another, thereby providing food for the vultures and their nestlings. Consequently, vultures become associated with death, disease, conflict and misfortune.

This explains why, in parts of southwestern Nigeria particularly, people reported that whenever a vulture is sighted, they either kill it or chase it away to prevent the illnesses, deaths or misfortunes they believe the bird brings.

Additionally, many people who hold these beliefs also consider vultures symbols of bad luck. They believe that seeing a vulture requires prayers or spiritual intervention to avert the misfortune that the bird is thought to carry.

Mongabay: What was that particular moment or experience that made you realize that vultures were in critical danger in Nigeria?

Michael Manja Williams: From my childhood, the first thing that captured my attention was when we saw that they’d declined in our community. Then I started finding out more about them online, where I saw that vultures are endangered. It was in 2015 that the IUCN [International Union of Conservation of Nature] upgraded them to critically endangered, so when I saw that, I was like, Oh, no wonder. The problem wasn’t only in my community. So I started my first research here in Plateau state and then I expanded the research to other communities in Nigeria to find out what could be the link between traditions and the decline in vultures. And I found out that a lot of threats were facing vultures. We’re seeing only two species now, and these species are declining, especially the hooded vulture .

I interviewed different traditional healers across the north and west of Nigeria and discovered different vulture parts — such as the head, the heart, the legs, the nest and even the feces — were used for traditional medicine. Many people have a belief that these body parts can cure one ailment or another. So when the vultures disappeared in most of these places, these traditionalists traveled to the south. I saw that if these practices continued, the vultures [population] would finish completely.

Mongabay: What possible dangers could the decline of the hooded vulture have in our environment?

Michael Manja Williams: Vultures, as we know them, are cleanup crews. They are far more important in controlling environmental diseases compared to feral dogs, cats and rodents. They have high hydrochloric acid [levels] in their stomachs. When they ingest anything — bacteria or virus — it’s a dead end. So, if we allow the vultures to go into extinction, our environment, in fact the ecosystem, will be at stake. In Nigeria, we’ve not yet estimated the direct link and certainty of the impact of the decline of vultures on our health. We know that yes, it leads to an increase in diseases. Like when the vultures declined in India, [scientists] realized that the [human] death rate increased by more than 4%. But here [in Nigeria], we’ve not yet established the percentage.

One discouraging thing is the government’s nonchalance. When you carry out research, the government hardly wants to look at that. You know, people care about politics, population, election, but nobody cares about the vultures. They already see them as awful animals, animals that nobody cares about, but actually there’s a link between vulture decline and the disease[s] we’re facing in our communities today.

Mongabay: Your research papers frequently address the ethno-ornithological factors of this crisis; that is, how traditional beliefs and practices significantly drive vulture decline in Nigeria. How do you and your team conduct surveillance in markets where wildlife trade is deeply entrenched?

Michael Manja Williams: If we learn that there are vultures — say, a number of vultures in these communities — we go to the communities, interact with the people. Sometimes we spend some days in these places learning about what they know about vultures, whether they’re taking any action to rescue the vultures, where more vultures could be found, what are they doing about the vultures, how their ways of life link to the survival or decline of the vultures around. Most recently we realized that if you do not collaborate with the community, you hardly know the truth. Last year, we trained some locals in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states to become Vulture Guardians. They help in ensuring that more people are sensitized within their communities. They speak to them in their local dialect, which they understand better, and they give us feedback to help us keep track of the vultures.

Mongabay: How do you persuade local communities to start caring for a bird they’ve long feared and persecuted?

Michael Manja Williams: When we go to a community, we ensure that, first, we meet the stakeholders — the village heads, youth leaders, women’s leaders and so on. We interact with them, allowing them to speak their minds about vultures; then we try to introduce science, explaining what vultures do to the environment. We try to do this in a way that is not too complex for them to take in, so we proceed with utmost care.

Actually, it isn’t easy convincing people whose minds are deep in their traditional beliefs. But there are people who, though aren’t educated much, are open-minded. So when you talk to them, they agree. They ask questions. When they’re convinced with your answers, they’re often ready to share the information with other people. These are the kinds of people we recruit as Vulture Guardians. If they are asked questions that are complex, they sometimes call us and we explain it to them. Some of these Vulture Guardians go further to browse for more information. So when these people share the information with their community members, they tend to believe them more than when they were approached by a stranger. For example, we use traditional healers to talk to other traditional healers and then they’re convinced. So the communication channel matters a lot.

Also we converse with different schoolchildren, especially secondary school children, who are easy to talk to about vultures. Some of the parents are often too busy to attend meetings, and so we measure the extent to which the information we share with these children is disseminated with their parents.

Mongabay: Based on your experience, are younger Nigerians more or less inclined to support vulture conservation?

Michael Manja Williams: We carried out research to check the impact of vulture-conservation education in schools, and we saw broader acceptance among the younger ones. They understand it better, and they are so curious about them [vultures]. When we give out information, the younger ones will ask more questions. For the older generation, it takes some time to peel off their superstitious beliefs completely. However, the younger ones have an open mind, so they accept the new knowledge and are able to show us that they understand what we’ve shared with them.

Mongabay: What challenges do you typically face in your conservation work?

Michael Manja Williams: Security is the number-one challenge of anybody researching in the wild in Nigeria. I have traveled across 18 states in carrying out research on vultures. Yet there are some places I need to go to but cannot. [In such cases] I do research by proxy, using people who are on the ground, and I cannot completely rely on their information.

Another thing is the disparity in belief systems. Traditional beliefs vary from place to place. In the [farther] South, for instance, the people have beliefs that tend to protect the vultures. But in the north and the west, the beliefs are those that harm vultures. So I just try to adjust to the perceptions of areas wherever I go and see how to create some impact.

Mongabay: Your most recent paper describes the collapse in Nigeria’s vulture population as ‘a daunting challenge.’ How do you maintain optimism amid this? 

Michael Manja Williams: I’ve seen a number of young minds that are now learning about vultures and other endangered species, embarking on self-sponsored projects and sensitizing their parents with their new knowledge. Some of them even come back to ask me, ‘What will I do to become like you?’ or ‘I want to study this. I feel like I want to do this.’ So this gives me hope that some people are beginning to have the passion to go into this [vulture conservation].

There are a lot of people being trained. We’re seeing more researchers venturing into the field. Even Nigeria now has a law-reform committee, so I’m foreseeing a lot of changes where the law and policies will favor vultures. Coupled with more efforts from researchers and the willingness of locals, I believe that vultures will be resuscitated in different communities across Nigeria.

Mongabay: What would success look like for you years from now? Is it an increase in the population of vultures or a shift in perceptions toward the birds?

Michael Manja Williams: I want to see the shift in perception, particularly from people that hold superstitious beliefs about vultures, since that’s the major problem. With that will then come the increase in the population of vultures, because one cannot happen without the other. So what we need more is collaboration with local stakeholders that still have pockets of vultures in their communities.

Banner image: A hooded vulture landing on its roost in Lagos, 2022. Image by Dotun55 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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Citation:

Williams, M. M., Orsar, J. T., Ottosson, U., Ivande, S. T., Alawa, G. N., & Eyos, K. A. (2026). How cultural beliefs, practices and taboos drive regional disparity in vulture abundance and conservation in Nigeria. Ostrich, 97(2), 84-91. doi:10.2989/00306525.2026.2656481

Cite this article

Kingsley Charles (2026). Confronting culture to protect vultures: Interview with Nigeria’s Michael Williams. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-322791

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