Written by: Ishfaq Naseem
3 min readPinjoreJun 24, 2013 04:17 AM IST
First published on: Jun 24, 2013 at 04:17 AM IST
Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) that maintains Asia’s largest vulture breeding and rescue centre in Pinjore — named last month as Jatayu Conservation and Breeding Centre — has identified eight vulture safe zones across India where the critically endangered scavenging bird would be released to boost its population. The sites are in Gujarat,Jharkhand,Uttarakhand as well as in the vicinity of the current centre.
While surveillance work is currently on at seven other centres,the carcass sampling would shortly start around Pinjore to find out the concentration of drug dicolfenac which is believed to be the main reason for their dwindling numbers. “We have identified eight sites where the vultures will be released. The sites include the one in Pinjore and our aim is to ensure that the drug diclofenac is not available in the 100-km radius. Part of the plan is also to do a pharmacy survey to find out the availability of drug. The carcass sampling would start around Pinjore shortly,’’ said Vibhu Prakash,deputy director and principal scientist,BNHS. The other sites include the one in Hazari Bagh area of Jharkhand and Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. These sites have been given priority as there is a sizeable population of the endangered bird in these areas.
The work on the release plan which has started would continue up to 2026 and the target is to release some 200 pairs of the bird. The current centre which is nestled in a deep forest range and follows a rough patch of potholed roads currently houses 160 vultures in four enclosures. The birds are constantly watched with the help of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras to find out their activities and to judge their feeding pattern as well as spot diseased ones.
BNHS experts insist that the release of the birds will happen in controlled settings only. As of now,officials say the possibility of releasing the bird in Mumbai where a large number of Parsees are settled is remote as the drug is still in use there.
Prakash said,“As of now,the multi-dose vials of the drug diclofenac is still available in the market for human usage which is also getting misused and used in animals.”
At the centre,however,rearing the vultures takes a lot of expertise. “Understanding the behavior of the bird is very important. The birds are fed on goat meat and the animal is killed and kept for 10 days to remove any traces of the drug diclofenac. After that they are fed to the bird. The bird is very sensitive. Each vulture gives one egg a year,but sometimes we incubate them so that there was no loss,” said Mandar Kulkarni,a research biologist with BNHS.
He said that the decline in the number of bird was due to the use of diclofenac and not due to less feed available. “There is no shortage of the carcass available for the bird to feed on in the habitations,” he added.
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