http://www.nepalitimes.com.np/issue/2012/05/25/LifeTimes/19320/print
The vultures are circling again
South Asia registers progress in saving vultures from extinction, but more needs to
be done
HUM GURUNG in NEW DELHI
FROM ISSUE #606 (25 MAY 2012 - 31 MAY 2012)
The governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal along with conservationists and
scientists gathered in New Delhi last week to assess efforts to save their vulture populations from
extinction.
Twenty years ago, there was a widespread decline in three Gyps vulture species (oriental whitebacked vulture, long-billed vulture and slender-billed vulture) across South Asia, and they were
subsequently classified as Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List. The vulture population
crashed and was nearly wiped out, and the cause was the use of the veterinary steroid,
diclofenac, which the birds ingested after eating carcasses of dead livestock.
Since an international vulture conservation conference in Kathmandu in 2004 decided to ban the
use of diclofenac, vulture populations have begun to rebound. In New Delhi last week, vultures
range countries and conservationists discussed further action to save the scavenger birds and
reintroduce them in the wild. Even though the production of diclofenac has been banned since
2006, there is still a large stockpile of the medicine in the market.
"The most recent available information indicates that elimination of diclofenac from the vultures'
food supply is incomplete, so further efforts are required to fully implement the ban," says Chris
Bowden of SAVE (Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction), a consortium of conservation
organisations based in UK. Homi Khusrokhan of the Bombay Natural History Society says human
diclofenac is another threat because of the large number of drug manufacturers, many of them in
the informal sector.
The encouraging news is that there are now vulture breeding centres in India, Pakistan and Nepal
where 252 vultures are under captive breeding. But the critical question is will there be a safe
environment for the new chicks when they are ready to be released in the wild?
Two immediate actions are required to secure a safe environment for vultures in the wild:
• South Asian vulture range countries must enforce the monitoring of the already banned
diclofenac
• Vulture Safe Zones (VSZs) need to be set up
India has made significant progress in setting up vulture breeding centres in four states. Nepal
has led the establishment of community managed provisional vulture safe zone (PVSZ) in 18
districts covering more than 32,657 square kilometres.
Satellite tracking of vultures by Bird Conservation Nepal shows that at least 100 km radius is
required for vultures to be safe and the area should be declared Vulture Safe Zones.
Vultures are not charismatic species like celebrity mammals, but they perform vital ecosystem
services. They are professional scavengers which add to nature's sanitation processes by
consuming dead carcasses and thereby prevent the spread of disease that may be harmful to
human beings.
For example, the cost of managing disease in humans and domestic livestock caused by an
increase in the population of feral dogs was estimated to be $ 34 billion in India alone from 19932006. Additional cultural cost to the Parsi community in Mumbai which relies on vulture for corpse
cleaning was estimated to be $ 1.6 million during the same period.
Vultures are sharply declining and local people across Nepal have already started to report the
negative impacts of drop in vulture population in their villages, according to Maheshwar Dhakal,
ecologist at Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
At the end of the Delhi conference, South Asian countries passed a declaration to set
up trans-boundary Vulture Safe Zones. This makes sense since the birds do not
recognise man-made boundaries.
Hum Gurung, PhD, is CEO of Bird Conservation Nepal and a member of the IUCN's
Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction (SAVE).