Vultures have all but been wiped out in India - a crisis that has prompted the government and other neighbouring countries to devise measures to bring back the nature's scavenger from the brink of extinction.
Vultures have all but been wiped out in India - a crisis that has prompted the government and other neighbouring countries to devise measures to bring back the nature's scavenger from the brink of extinction.
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In the next two days, the ministry of environment and forests will hold talks with counterparts from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal to decide on a plan for the subcontinent. The ministry also plans a national census to find the exact number of birds in India. Three species of the bird are found exclusively in the sub-continent -- Slender-billed, long-billed and white-billed. Over 90 per cent of the birds have died in the last decade. One of the major reasons for the deaths of thousands of vultures is Diclofenac, the anti-imflammatory drug. The ministry is lobbying for a ban on the drug. "The drug is widely used by vets as pain-killing injections. Studies have found that the drug causes renal failure or visceral gout. We have asked concerned ministries to ban the drug but they point out it will take some time," said a senior ministry official. Three states have already banned the drug.
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The drug enters the vulture's body when it feeds on dead animals or humans injected with the drug. Which is why the vulture population has not been affected much in tribal areas, where the drug is not used.
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The drug enters the vulture's body when it feeds on dead animals or humans injected with the drug. Which is why the vulture population has not been affected much in tribal areas, where the drug is not used.
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The first confirmation of Diclofenac being the cause of vulture deaths came in May 2004 when studies in Pakistan showed that over 85 per cent of over 359 vultures have died because of renal failure caused by the drug. Within a year, Diclofenac was confirmed as the culprit for vulture deaths in India.
Among the alternatives to the drugs are Meloxican. Tests on vultures have shown that it does not have harmful effects. Another drug Ketoprofen is being tested in northern India's first vulture captive breeding zone in Pinjore, near Chandigarh.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
