North Bengal faces vulture free forests

Siliguri, Nov 9: The population of vultures is fast disappearing from north Bengal, home to many wild animals and a variety of avian species, a seminar on the giant bird was today.

Naturalists and bird watchers have expressed concern over the rapid banishment of the flesh eating bird from the skies of north Bengal in the past five-six years.

An amateur bird watcher claimed that Siliguri town alone had hundreds of whitebacked vultures till six years ago, but now their numbers had slumped to only 25-30.

Animesh Basu, also the executive member of Himalayan Nature and Foundation, said the town's main fish/mutton markets section had been daily infested by vultures till five to six years ago. Now the scavenger birds were absent.

While the Slender Bill and Long Bill varieties are near extinct, the White Backed's population is only one per cent, the experts said.

Participants at a seminar on 'Vulture and its Status in North Bengal' here informed the audience that the region now had only 130 vultures of Whiteback variety and there was none of Slender Bill and Long Bill types. The figures were available after scores of NGOs along with the state government's wildlife experts had undertaken a census on vulture population in North Bengal last year.

The one-day seminar was attended among others by Dr R Vibhu of Bombay Natural History and Society, Dr Richard Cuthgerp of Royal Society of Protection of Bird, UK, Chief Conservator of Wildlife, West Bengal government, V K Yadav and many wildlife experts and representiatives of 18 NGOs.

There is a theory that most of the vultures are victims of ''diclofenac'' a medicine used for the cattle. There is a common perception among the people that the vultures are disappearing after eating the corpses of these cattle.

The speakers debated these theories cautiously, and warned that any hasty conclusion might jeopardise their research work for restoring the vulture population.

Britain's Royal Society of Protection of Bird has already promised funds for a vulture breeding centre in captivity at Raja Bhat Khawa in Tiger Reserve forest of north Bengal. The breeding centre with 14 vulturesat present is the second of its kind in the country after Pinjar in Rajasthan.

UNI