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Queenstown farmer-conservationist Kate Webster has found 46 dead poisoned Cape Griffon Vultures on a farm near Molteno close to two sheep carcasses.
She says the nature of Wednesday's incident is still unknown but all indications point to carbofuran poisoning.
Webster told AlgoaFM News she was tracking a tagged-vulture when she made the gruesome discovering.
She says the value of the birds is more than 2 and a half million rands and that its one of the biggest incidents of its kind ever recorded in the Eastern Cape.
Webster has laid a charge with the police and says the Green Scorpions will now handle the investigation going forward.
She says people under estimate the vital role vultures have to play in the ecosystem system.
"They are actually the vacuum cleaners of the earth and they prevent the spread of a lot of diseases like rabies and anthrax and that is going to be devastating if we remove them from the cycle" she said.
The Griffon Poison information centre says vulture poisoning is becoming worse than during the 1970s and 1980s when such incidents were common environmental crimes. Good conservation work and lobbying brought vulture poisoning down to only a few incidents per year by the end of the previous millennium.
What has changed in recent times is the total onslaught of poachers aiming for rhinos, elephants and probably also lions to fuel the trade in rhino horn, elephant ivory and lion
bones. Vultures are deliberately poisoned after these animals have been poached to avoid carcasses being detected by game rangers. The increase in livestock predation also
contributes to the misuse of agricultural remedies to poison predators that inadvertenly leads to vulture poisoning.
