![]() The white-rumped vulture once described ‘as the most numerous raptor in the subcontinent’, had become the most imperilled bird of prey (or raptor) in the world.įrom millions, the population of the three Gyps species has been recently estimated to be about 20,000, i.e., 12,000 long-billed, 6,000 white-rumped and the rarest being the slender-billed vulture at 1,000.īy 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared all these three species in its highest risk category – Critically Endangered. “I was worried, perplexed – unable to understand what was going on with the birds,” he recalled.īy 2000, not one vulture remained in Bharatpur, setting off an alarm, and soon anecdotal reports of similar declines were pouring in from across the country. To his shock, Prakash found dead vultures- camouflaged in the vegetation, on trees, and even in nests. ![]() In 1987-88, he had enumerated 353 nesting pairs of vultures in the 29 sq km park by 1996 the number had halved. It was Vibhu Prakash, principal scientist with the BNHS, who first documented the decline in Rajasthan’s famous Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur. Initially few noticed the vulture decline, with stray reports coming in from researchers and villagers who noticed that the birds were “simply nowhere to be seen.” Adult white-backed vulture in the wild. The last captive bird, Martha, was found dead in September 1914, in her cage in the Cincinnati Zoo. At 3 billion, the passenger pigeon was once considered the most numerous bird on the planet, but by the early 1990s, none remained in the wild. ![]() The slide is more dramatic than even the much-cited passenger pigeon. ![]() “This is the fastest decline of any bird species ever reported anywhere in the world”, said Asad Rahmani, former director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). bengalensis) the decline was even more catastrophic, at 99.9 between 19. tenuirostris) had crashed by an astounding 97 percent, while in the white-rumped ( G. Three of India’s vulture species of the genus ‘ Gyps’-the long-billed ( Gyps indicus) and the slender-billed ( G. In just over a decade, they were gone, their numbers plummeting to near extinction. A historical picture of vultures in Delhi. A survey across 18 protected areas in India was extrapolated to estimate that in 1991-92 there were over 40 million vultures in India. There were so many that no one thought to count them indeed they were too numerous to enumerate. They could usually be found hunched by the roadside, long, naked neck buried deep in the carcass of some unfortunate animal or circling the sky in great numbers like a huge dark cloud. Once, these large, ungainly birds were ubiquitous – seen in both cities and countryside, perched on trees and electric poles, cliffs and housetops. With the vulture, it was the tragedy of the commons. The crisis is however far from over with other veterinary drugs toxic to vultures still in use.A survey published in December 2017 shows that vulture declines have slowed, though at very low level, across India, Nepal and Pakistan.The near extinction of this efficient scavenger is linked to spread of zoonotic diseases and increased incidence of rabies.India’s three vulture species saw an unprecedented decline of 97 to 99.9 percent between 19 owing to ingesting diclofenac through cattle carcasses.
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