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Asian vulture numbers dwindle

vulture-white-backed GETTY.BMPThe Asian vulture could be flapping its last, according to Indian naturalists.

Widespread use of the drug diclofenac is generally believed to be behind a massive drop in their numbers. And despite the anti-inflammatory being outlawed in livestock, widespread use continues to fell the birds, in whom it triggers kidney failure.

A new paper in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society reports that “the oriental white-backed vulture is now in dire straits with only one thousandth of the 1992 population remaining” (pdf – note this has the wrong date on it, press release).

Long-billed and slender-billed vultures are also in trouble. The survey detailed in this paper concludes that all three species could be down to just a few hundred birds across the whole of India. They could be “functionally extinct in less than a decade”, according to Vibhu Prakash, of the Bombay Natural History Society, and his colleagues.

As a number of newspapers note, following the press release, the vultures are disappearing faster than dodos did.


More should be done to stop the use of diclofenac says co-author Andrew Cunningham, of the Zoological Society of London.

“They have only banned its manufacture for veterinary treatments, the manufacture for medical treatments are unaffected by this ban,” he says (BBC). “The treatment of animals with diclofenac also hasn’t been banned, so people are now just using the medical version to treat animals rather than buying the veterinary one.”

Cunningham also notes that a shortage of vultures is having knock on effects (Guardian):

The white-backed vulture was the primary scavenger. Piles of carcasses aren’t being eaten. You’ve got possible contamination of watercourses. But because you’ve got this super-abundance of food lying about the place, other scavengers are moving in but they’re the sort you don’t want to have around, mainly things like rats and feral dogs. The dog population is increasing dramatically.

The Times highlights the fact that a lack of vultures is a problem for the Parsi community, who traditionally dispose of their dead by leaving them to be eaten atop a ‘Tower of Silence’.

Captive breeding, it seems, is the big birds only hope.

Past Nature stories on the problem:

Vet drug blamed for vulture death (2003)

Switching vet drug could save vultures (2006)

Promise of drug-free dinners for India’s vultures (2006)

More

BNHS vulture page

Image: white backed vulture / Getty

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