Crisis for Vultures
By Jemima Parry-Jones MBE, Director, International Centre for Birds of Prey
During my life I have had some interesting requests for help, some have been tedious, some impossible and some fascinating, but somewhat out of the norm. In 1999 I was approached by a good friend of mine, a scientist in Glasgow who is known for his vulture work; he had been approached by the Parsis, a religious group of people with a large part of their following based in Mumbai, who had for 2,000 years had their dead consumed by vultures. However the problem was that their dead were no longer being consumed by the vultures because apparently there were no vultures to do the task.
That year I had a number of trips to do, Japan: the Philippines and now India, and I am not a great one for travel! However, off I went to Mumbai (that trip is a story in itself) and saw the problem, and without realising what the real problem was, because no one did at that stage, put forward a few suggestions as to what could be done.
In 2000 I was invited to a conference in Delhi on the now beginning to be recognised, staggering decline of the three species of Gyps vultures in SE Asia, and in particular in India, Nepal and Pakistan. This international conference with vulture experts and enthusiasts from around the world were told of the disastrous decline. It had been highlighted by Dr Vibhu Prakash from Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), the Parsis had been
right, there was a huge problem with vultures, but not just the population that had regularly visited the Towers of Silence, this was a range wide catastrophe.
After the conference two groups started serious research on what was happening to the birds and, at the same time, surveys were initiated to see what the real numbers were. Sadly as is so often the case, because the birds had been enormously high in numbers and very common, no serious monitoring had been done before the decline. As the surveys came in, the proportion of the decline became apparent and very worrying. 95% of the birds appeared to have gone: over time this increased to 99.9%. All three species, the Oriental White-backed Vulture, the Long-billed Vulture and the Slender Billed Vulture were all in very serious trouble.
One group was researching a possible virus or infection to be responsible and the other group was looking into toxins and secondary poisoning, as was the case with DDT and dieldrin in Europe and North America in the past. The results were staggering; in 2003, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug called Diclofenac was found to be the cause. It had been invented by Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) in 1973, an American company, for treating humans, had reached the end of its patent and had been licensed in SE Asia, Africa and South America for use as a veterinary drug. It was this drug that had killed vultures by the millions and is still killing them today in SE Asia.
An Action Plan was put forward by the International group; this consisted of monitoring the remaining birds, monitoring the use of Diclofenac, removing Diclofenac as a veterinary drug, finding a suitable replacement drug for cattle that was safe for vultures, and starting a captive breeding programme within the three main countries to keep a population of birds safe during the period of removing Diclofenac, and to then be able to repopulate
|148| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE
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