She was born in South Africa sometime before 2004, but her life took a turn when she flew into a power line and injured her wing. The cape vulture’s name was Motswari.
She would have died in the wild, but she was rescued and brought to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs to serve as a symbol of an endangered animal that gets a bad reputation.
Vultures are often called “nature’s garbage disposal,” according to Jeremy Dillon, an animal care manager at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
The name is quite accurate as they feed on animal carcasses. But to shun the animal would be wrong because they provide an important job in Africa’s ecosystem, Dillon said.
Dillon said the animals they eat often have diseases, and when the cape vultures feast, they prevent those diseases from spreading to farmers’ livestock. Those are the stories about vultures Dillon said Motswari was helping to tell in a place where people have never seen a wild one.
“So between poisoning and shooting and man-made reasons, the cape vultures have plummeted probably around 20 percent in the past 5 years,” said John Azua, the Curator of Birds at the Denver Zoo.
Motswari was safe from those killers in captivity, but not from Monday afternoon’s hail storm.
The baseball-sized hail came crashing down without warning, and Motswari was one of several animals who never made it to shelter.
“It was tough,” said Dillon. “Her loss hit the staff here hard.”
Azua said Motswari was one of just 35 cape vultures in North American zoos.
In Tswana, a language spoken in Southern Africa, Motswari translates to “keep and conserve.”
The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo hopes even after her death, that message for all cape vultures lives on.
