Vulture chick born at Pinjore in Haryana

Mumbai, Jan 8 (UNI) The country's first white-backed vulture chick has been successfully bred in the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre of the Bombay Natural History Society at Pinjore in Haryana.

''While the incubation period is 55 days, the chick was born a day before,'' Principal Scientist and head of the Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme in India Dr Vibhu Prakash and BNHS Director Dr Asad Rahmani said.

''I am happy with the successful breeding. We achieved the success almost two years before the set target of 2008. However, we will now have to effectively implement the ban on the killer veterinary drug Diclofenac to ensure a better future to this newborn Vulture,'' Dr Rahmani said.

''The Conservation Breeding Programme is the only hope for the recovery of vultures. The BNHS, set up in collaboration with the forest department of Haryana, aims at releasing 100 pairs of three critically endangered vulture species to repopulate the wild population'', he said.

Vultures, the nature's most efficient scavengers, are on the verge of extinction. Nine species of vultures were recorded from the Indian subcontinent, of which white-backed vulture Gyps Bengalensis, long-billed vulture Gyps indicus and slender-billed Gyps tenuerostris vultures were the most common species in India.

However, over the last decade, there has been a drastic drop in the population of these vultures in most parts of the country.

In May 2003, the cause of the drop was found to be a commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory veterinary drug, Diclofenac.

It is used as a painkiller for the livestock. If the animal dies during or after the treatment of this painkiller, and if Vulture feeds on the carcass, the drug enters into the vulture's body.

The Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme of the BHNS is supported by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Darwin Initiative for the survival of species, UK, the Royal Society for Protection of Birds (RSPB) of UK, Zoological Survey of London (ZSL), UK, and Haryana, West Bengal and Assam governments.

UNI