India faces health threats as vultures vanish

In the Holy scriptures of the Hindus, Jatayu the vulture tried to rescue Lord Ram’s wife, Sita from the evil clutches of the demon Ravan.

Unfortunately for the valiant vulture, Ravan sliced off its wings and the bird bled to death but not before he had told Ram where Sita was and the lord was able to rescue her, setting the stage for celebrating India’s biggest festival, the burning of Ravan’s effigy during the festival of Dussehra.

Despite its noble deed, Jatayu and the rest of its ilk are vanishing so fast in India that scientists fear they are well on their way to extinction.

In the past two decades, vulture numbers have dropped by 99 per cent, causing major environmental problems in the country.

“In the early 1980s, vultures were a hazard in the aviation industry because they were frequently crashing into the aircraft. Now they are virtually extinct,” comments Nikita Prakash, the technical assistant at the world’s first vulture breeding conservation centre in Pinjore on the foothills of the Shivalik mountains, part of the lower range of the Himalayas.

Her husband, Dr Vibhu Prakash, working on his research on the birds in the 1980s, sounded the alarm on the rapidly vanishing vulture populations in India.

Today, he heads the vulture breeding conservation centre working with a team of volunteers and researchers, including his wife.

As a young researcher, Kenya’s Dr Munir Virani, programme director for The Peregrine Fund for Africa and South Asia with research on raptors in jeopardy, was under Dr Prakash’s mentorship.

Back in Kenya, Dr Virani applied his skills to vulture research and found the frightening scenario repeated in Kenya — that of a rapidly diminishing vulture population previously undetected — and like the Indian scenario, the cause is human-induced by way of chemicals.

In Kenya, it’s the use of furadan, a highly lethal agro-chemical used as a poison to get rid of wildlife that “preys” on livestock, while in India farmers use diclofenac to increase the working life of cattle.

“Today, we have less than one per cent of the 1980 population remaining and it’s a crisis that has been discussed in the Indian parliament. But unfortunately, vultures aren’t as charismatic as the tigers, lions or elephants and so there’s not much support coming for them,” says Nikita. Today, vultures are only found in small pockets in the country where once there were flocks in their hundreds.

Vultures may not be pretty birds, but watching a pair of Himalayan Griffons rescued and brought to the centre, they are definitely handsome birds.

The chemical diclofenac is a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug used as a painkiller for cattle.

Despite its banning in 2008, veterinary doctors are still prescribing diclofenac formulated for human use because it has the same effect on cattle.

The drug prolongs the working life of the animals by reducing joint pain but the problem arises when the animal dies and vultures swoop in for a tragic feast.