Introduction
In this modern day and age our world is rapidly growing and developing around us. We see examples of industrialisation and urbanisation in our everyday lives. These are great accomplishments for mankind as we can create more space to house our growing population, mine more resources to meet growing demands and use advanced technology to ward off any threats to our race. However these are short term advantages. As a result of overpopulation, industrialisation and urbanisation we, as humans, are destroying the natural world that supports millions of other animal species. Our actions interfere with and sometimes destroy entire ecosystems; this will cause animal populations to decline and inevitably go extinct. We need to look at the long term affects our actions are having, we need to investigate what destroying the natural world means for the survival and sustainability of our race and all other species on Earth. One way to investigate this is by focussing on specific interactions that certain species have on their surrounding environment. I have decided to focus on vultures in South Africa because I feel vultures play a very important role by disposing of carrion (dead animals) that would otherwise be a breeding ground for disease and bacteria. The consequences of the lack of this natural disposal service should be investigated
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In African savannas, apart from small predatory species such as mongoose and genets, these might include jackals, lions and hyenas. But these types of non-specialist scavengers may not scavenge randomly but on those carcasses where specialists, i.e. vultures, are present in part because the aerial movements of vultures often lead other scavengers to carcasses. Therefore, vulture extinction may lead to a decline in the diversity of species scavenging at