Vulture deaths

The death of six vultures in a village in the Lakhimpur district is not at all good news. According to reports, the birds were reportedly killed by poison in the carcass of a dog, suspected to have been killed by poisoning. There is a general perception in society that the vulture is a “bad” and harmful creature. But biologists and environmentalists have scientifically proved that vultures play a crucial role in the environment of the area in which they live. These ‘scavenger birds’ perform the ‘dirty work’ of cleaning up after death of animals, in the process also contributing towards keeping the ecosystems healthy and preventing spread of diseases. Vultures also help stopping spread of bacteria and fungus from dead animal carcasses in the environment. Many people consider vultures as ‘ugly’. Even Charles Darwin once described vultures as “disgusting” birds, looking just at their appearance. According to the Vulture Conservation Foundation, vultures have extremely corrosive stomach acids, which allow them to consume rotting animal corpses. Important to note, these carcasses of farm and domestic animals thrown away in the open are often infected with anthrax, botulinum toxins and rabies, which would otherwise kill other animals if left to be tasted. But when a vulture consumes such carcasses, they keep diseases in check by digesting the rotten meat. It has been said that way back in the early 1980s, three species of vultures—the white-rumped vulture, the long-billed vulture, and the slender-billed vulture—had a combined estimated population of about 40 million in South Asia. By 2017, this number had dropped drastically to just about 19,000. Looking at India alone, it is said that the country has lost close to 99 percent of the population of three species of vultures - the white-backed vulture, the long-billed vulture, and the slender-billed vulture. Media reports say that the government has plans to establish eight new captive breeding centres for vultures under the revised National Vulture Conservation Action Plan (2020-2025) in addition to the existing eight. But then environmentalists and conservationists have said that these new centres will not produce the desired result until the toxicity of certain non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) like aceclofenac, ketoprofen, nimesulide, and diclofenac is fully understood.