Four new breeding centres for threatened vulture soon

New Delhi, Mar 5 (UNI) Four new vulture breeding centres will soon be set up in different parts of the country.

The big bird is threatened with extinction in India and other countries of the sub-continent.

The places where the centres will be set up are Sakhabagh (Juna garh), Nehru Zoological Park(Hyderabad), Nandankan Zoological Park(Bhubaneswar) and Van Vihar National Park(Bhopal), Dr A S Gupta of the Central Zoo Authority told UNI.

The grant for the projects has been sanctioned and an MoU between the states concerned and the Centre will be signed soon.

He said the Central Zoo Authority would give scientific and technical expertise to state governments in setting up the centres.

Three vulture species, the slender-billed Gyps tenuirostris, Indian G. indicus and white-rumped vultures G. bengalensis, have died in large numbers in recent years from kidney failure after eating the flesh of cattle treated with diclofenac. Now categorised as critically endangered, they have declined by up to 97 per cent in the past 15 years.

The white-rumped vulture was probably the most common large bird of prey in the world before the use of diclofenac on cattle led to their fall.

A research by the Bombay Natural History Society showed most of the affected birds were suffering from acute gout and gut inflammation. It was suspected that the birds might be dying due a disease caused probably by a virus.

However, later it was established that it was the drug diclofenac given to cattle as painkiller which was the main culprit. The birds who fed on carcasses developed kidney failure leading to their death.

Following this discovery which was made about four years ago, the government last year banned the drug.

There are now reports that the decline in the population of vultures has been arrested after the ban on veterinary drug diclofenac about a year ago.

Ministry of Environment sources had recently said preliminary observations had revealed that there were signs of their rerival.

UNI