Vulture Conservation in India

Vulture Species

Most of the 23 species of vultures in the world are found in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Australia does not have vultures. About 16 species are reported from the old world (a term used in the West to refer to Asia, Africa, and Europe) and seven from the new world (a term referring to the Americas –North, South, and Central). The Californian and the Andean vultures are given the name of ‘condor’. Eight of the 16 species belong to the genus Gyps. They are placed within the family Accipitridae and order Accipitriformes as they represent the vultures of the old world.

Nine species of vultures are recorded in India. Five of these belong to the genus Gyps: Gyps bengalensis or the Oriental white-backed vulture (OWBV), Gyps indicus or the long-billed vulture (LBV), Gyps tenuirostris or the slender-billed vulture (SBV), all the three being residents of India, Gyps himalayensis or the Himalayan vulture (HV) which is largely wintering (i.e., visiting the country only in winter), and Gyps fulvus or the Eurasian griffon (EG) which is strictly wintering. The other four are monotypic (i.e., there is only one member in the genus; there is no subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa): the Sarcogyps calvus or the red-headed vulture (RHV), Neophron percnopterus or the Egyptian vulture (EV), Gypaetus barbatus or the bearded vulture (BV), which are all residents, and Aegypius calvus or cinereous vulture (CV) which is strictly wintering.

Importance of Vultures

Nature’s most efficient scavengers, the vultures once kept the environment clean in India even when effective disposal systems for carcasses and slaughter house waste were lacking. By cleaning up the carcasses before disease-causing bacteria and fungus could grow and multiply on them, these vultures prevented the outbreak of epidemics. Incidentally, the vultures are not affected by eating rotting flesh. With the decline of vultures, the undisposed livestock carcasses could affect groundwater safety and play a part in spreading livestock-borne diseases like tuberculosis and anthrax. With the increased availability of food, resident feral dog populations seem to be increasing, leading to serious consequences both for human and wildlife health because dogs carry several diseases that could affect humans and livestock.

Vultures also have cultural and religious significance in many communities of the world. The Parsees leave their dead to be consumed by the vultures.

The cattle bones cleared of flesh by vultures used to be collected by people for use as fertiliser.

Causes of Mortality in Vultures in Recent Times

The main reasons for vulture mortality in recent times are as follows:

(i) Poisoning through NSAIDS In 2004, the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) expressed their concern that vultures were dying off by eating carcasses infused with diclofenac used by veterinarians. Now, it is found that many non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) used by veterinarians for treating cattle were toxic to vultures. Drugs like diclofenac, aceclofenac, and ketoprofen make their way into the vulture’s system as these birds feed on the carcasses of animals that have been given the drugs. This leads to the failure of the vultures’ kidneys and ultimately to their death.

(ii) Unintentional poisoning Apart from the veterinary NSAIDs, vultures could be killed by unintentional or retaliatory poisoning; this happens when a cattle owner or farmer stuffs the carcass of his cattle, killed either by feral dogs or a wild predator, with organo-chlorine or organo-phosphate. Though such incidences of poisoning are not common enough to be held responsible for the drastic fall in vulture populations, it could become significant given the increasing human-animal conflicts. Even occasional unintentional poisoning of carcasses could cause local extinctions as the population of vultures has already become very low. Another major problem is the easy availability of strong agricultural pesticides, such as carbamates (Furadan), phorate, phosphamidon, malathion, and monocrotophos, which are sometimes used for retaliatory poisoning.

(iii) Collisions with power infrastructure Not much reliable information is available about this threat in Asia and the Middle East, but monitored bird mortality for one year at a wind farm in Gujarat confirms that collisions of birds with turbines occur. However, vultures were not recorded in the study. Information from Africa and Europe shows that the threats of collision must be taken seriously in view of the increasing density of power grids.

(iv) Electrocution Bird mortality due to electrocution on power poles is a global problem. Large species like vultures, eagles, and storks are particularly vulnerable. The risk of electrocution can be very significant at old, badly designed and uninsulated poles, and poorly located power lines.

Diminishing Population of Vultures in India

Vultures were very common in India till the 1980s, and three of the resident Gyps species—OWBV, LBV, and SBV—were estimated to have numbered around 40 million.  The numbers are reported to have come down to 19,000 by 2017. Based on the survey carried out in 2015 and the results published in 2017, there were about 6,000 OWBV, 12,000 LBV, and 1,000 SBV. Between the 1990s and 2007, numbers of the three species had fallen drastically with 99 per cent of the species having been wiped out. The number of RHV declined by 91 per cent while the number of Egyptian vultures declined by 80 per cent.

According to the IUCN Red Data Book, four resident species, namely, OWBV, LBV, SBV, and RHV are critically endangered; EV is endangered; CV and HV are near threatened; and EG is of least concern.

Nationwide vulture surveys are being carried out by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) every four years sponsored by the union environment ministry and forest departments of various states since 1990.

In 2004, the cause of the drastic fall in population of vultures was established as diclofenac, a veterinary NSAID.

India’s Action Plan 2006

India’s environment ministry took immediate action as the decline in numbers of vultures came to be known and released the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (APVC) 2006 in order to save the vultures from possible extinction.

Objectives The main objectives of the APVC 2006 were: to remove the main causative agent for vulture mortality (diclofenac); to curb leakage of human formulation of diclofenac into the veterinary sector; to monitor conservation and recovery of existing vulture sites; to set up and expand vulture care and breeding centres; to control further mortality; to raise awareness especially among users of veterinary formulation; and to monitor implementation of the action plan.

Outcome The ministry worked with state forest departments and BNHS to implement the action plan and succeeded in arresting, to some extent, the decline in the vulture populations by 2011.

The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) banned the veterinary use of diclofenac in 2006, restricted the vial size of the human formulation of diclofenac in 2015 to prevent its misuse in treating cattle. The vulture populations were monitored throughout the country by conducting nation-wide road transect surveys, once in four years.

The Central Zoo Authority (CZA) and BNHS led the establishment of the Vulture Conservation Breeding Programme successfully; all the three critically endangered resident Gyps species have been bred for the first time ever in captivity. Eight centres were established—at Pinjore in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal, Rani in Assam, Kerwa near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Junagarh in Gujarat, Nandankanan in Odisha, Hyderabad in Telangana, and Muta in Ranchi. The first four are managed by the respective state forest departments with support from BNHS and the union environment ministry, and the other four are established in state zoos and are being run by state forest departments with support from the Central Zoo Authority.

The Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) led a research study to identify a safe alternative to diclofenac. An alternative to diclofenac has been found in Meloxicam which was proved to be safe for vultures. The IVRI is also leading the research on a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC)-sponsored project on safety testing of veterinary NSAIDS available in the market of vultures. The safety testing of tolfenamic acid is being carried out on HV at Pinjore, Haryana.

The Vulture Safe Zone programme is being implemented at eight different places in the country where there were extant populations of vultures. (An area is declared a Vulture Safe Zone only when no toxic drugs are found in pharmacy and cattle carcass surveys for two consecutive years and the vulture populations are stable and not declining.) Vulture safe zones were identified at Pinjore in Haryana, Rajabhatkhawa in West Bengal, around Majuli Island in Assam, Bukswaha in Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Dudhwa National Park and Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, Central Gujarat and Saurashtra in Gujarat.

A National Vulture Recovery Committee was constituted by MoEFCC to monitor the implementation of the action plan.

But challenges remained. The vulture populations are still too small and their vulnerability to adverse events will remain till their numbers have increased substantially. The low natural reproductive capacity and long duration of immaturity of vultures increases the period of vulnerability: it takes at least ten years for a wild vulture population to double in size. Despite the ban on diclofenac as a veterinary drug, the misuse of multi-dose vials of the human formulation of the drug in treating cattle continued to cause mortality in vultures. Moreover, other NSAIDs harmful to vultures continue to be used by veterinarians. It was thus felt that a revised conservation plan was needed, not only to continue with some of the actions initiated, but also to expand the scope of some objectives of the earlier conservation plan. It was decided to extend the vulture conservation project to 2025 with the idea of not just halting the decline but to actively increase the vulture numbers in India.

National Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020–25

The National Action Plan for Vulture Conservation in India 2020–25 was approved in November 2020 by the National Board for Wild Life (NBWL), and released by the MoEFCC.

The plan advocates the prevention of misuse of veterinary NSAIDs by ensuring their sale only on prescription so that banned drugs are not used in veterinary treatment. The plan strongly recommends that the veterinary treatment should be given only by qualified veterinarians in order to prevent overuse of NSAIDs in treating livestock because toxicity of most of the drugs is dose-based. The plan recommends that livestock carcasses should be scientifically disposed to save the vultures from getting exposed to the toxic carcasses of animals. It is also stressed that strong and sustained awareness programmes should be taken up to make all the stakeholders aware of the importance of conservation of vultures and the measures undertaken by the ministry of environment.

Objectives The action plan for 2020–25 has the following objectives:

1. to prevent the poisoning of the principal food of vultures, the cattle carcasses, with veterinary NSAIDs, by ensuring that sale of veterinary NSAIDs is regulated and is disbursed only on prescription and to ensure that treatment of livestock is done only by qualified veterinarians;
2. to carry out safety testing of available molecules of veterinary NSAIDs on vultures, and introduction of these molecules only after their safety is proved by testing on vultures;
3. to institute a system through the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to automatically remove toxic drugs like aceclofenac and ketoprofen are removed from veterinary use, and to ensure that such drugs are also banned;
4. to establish additional Conservation Breeding Centres in Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, besides the 8 Vulture Conservation Breeding Centres already working in different parts of the country;
5. to set up a conservation breeding programme for the populations of RHV and EV as they have also been reduced by over 80 per cent over the years, and to initiate the conservation breeding programme for RHV and EV in the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centres by creating additional infrastructure;
6. to set up four rescue centres in different geographical areas, such as Pinjore in North India, Bhopal in Central India, Guwahati in Northeast India and Hyderabad in South India as there are currently no dedicated vulture rescue centres to treat vultures that get injured in accidents and fall sick by unintentional poisoning;
7. to carry out co-ordinated nation-wide vulture count (in February once in four years) to get a better estimate of the size of vulture populations in the country in collaboration with forest departments, BNHS, research institutes, NGOs, and ordinary citizens;
8. to establish at least one vulture safe zone in each state for the conservation of the remnant populations in that state by ensuring low prevalence of toxic NSAIDs in an area of 100-km radius from the vulture colony through targeted advocacy and awareness programmes following the established protocol;
9. to gather information of other emerging threats to vulture conservation, such as collision and electrocution due to rapid development of the power infrastructure and the spread of power lines, and unintentional poisoning of carcasses, which could become a serious problem for vulture conservation with increasing human-animal conflicts.

Implementation The Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (APVC) 2020–25 will be implemented through various central as well as state agencies. The MoEFCC, the National Vulture Recovery Committee (NVRC), the National Committee for Vulture Conservation, the Central Zoo Authority, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Ministry of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, and state committees, etc., will be involved.

The state committees will ensure the implementation of the action plan at the state. Besides, they will facilitate the setting up of vulture conservation breeding centres in the identified states; appoint a state coordinator for the nation-wide vulture census; identify locations of vultures; develop teams for carrying out census and developing capacity; collect cattle carcass liver samples with the scientific institutions or NGOs engaged in vulture conservation once in four years; make arrangements to send the rescued and dead vultures to the rescue centres (in case of the rescued vultures, facilitating their treatment at the centres and in case of mortality or dead vultures that are sent to the centres, facilitating post-mortem to find out the cause of mortality); and prepare an annual report on vulture conservation in the state.

A National Vulture Recovery Committee (NVRC), headed by the ADG (Wildlife), will monitor the implementation of the APVC 2020–25. The APVC will also seek advice from the existing regional steering committee and SAVE (Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction. Support would also be drawn from Multi-species Action Plan (MsAP) of Raptors MoU and Convention of Migratory Species (CMS).

The APVC will be extended for another five years after 2025 following a critical evaluation of the implementation of the key objectives or the action points.

A detailed mid-term review of the APVC will be made during the year 2022–2023 under the chairmanship of IG (Wildlife) with a three-member expert committee, appointed from the NVRC.

Expected outcome The National Committee, headed by Secretary (Wildlife), MoEFCC, is expected to update the following points during the NVRC meeting in 2025:

1. All existing molecules of NSAIDs are safely tested, and restrictions are placed on the veterinary use of the ones found toxic to vultures.
2. The NSAIDs are put in the Schedule-X of the Drugs and Cosmetic Act 1940 and are available only on prescription of veterinarians and one copy of the prescription is retained by the chemist.
3. Cattle and livestock are treated only by qualified veterinarians following the best practices, including administration of prescribed doses of drugs to animals.
4. A robust regulatory mechanism should exist by which all vulture toxic NSAIDs are automatically banned for veterinary use.
5. Disposal of domestic carcasses is scientifically managed and vultures are not exposed to treated carcasses.
6. The carcasses of wild ungulates are left out in the open in protected areas and reserved forests for scavengers.
7. The locations for the proposed vulture safe zones are identified in all the states and all the species of vultures are covered in at least two states and vulture populations are monitored in all the proposed vulture safe zones and also the prevalence of various veterinary drugs is carried out by pharmacy surveys and cattle carcass sampling.
8. The additional vulture conservation breeding centres proposed in the action plan and the existing centres are fully functional and follow the standard protocols developed by Central Zoo Authority.
9. Vulture reintroduction programme is ongoing, and released vultures are monitored by satellite tracking, and no drug-related mortality is reported.
10. The baseline information on the population trends is established for all the nine species of vultures in the country, at the national and state levels; and coordinated nation-wide counts are carried out every four years.
11. Populations of none of the species are declining.

Institutional framework and implementation strategy Though the implementation of the plan 2020–25 rests with MoEFCC, the licensing and the distribution of the drugs is the responsibility of the DCGI of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare while the dispensing and administration is to be dealt with by the Animal Husbandry Commissioner of Ministry of Animal Husbandry. The Ministry of Power, Renewable Energy, Chemical and Fertilizer need to be involved to a lesser extent.

International and Regional Action Plans

The Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian Vultures (Vulture MsAP) is an international action plan, which is relevant to vulture conservation in India. The Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) or the Bonn Convention under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) aims to conserve migratory species throughout their range. India had become a party to the CMS since November 1983. The MsAP was developed by CMS Raptors MoU and was adopted at the Conference of the Parties12 (COP12) held in Manila, Philippines in October 2017. The action plan covers all the nine species of vultures recorded from India. India became the 54th signatory to the MoU in 2015.

The Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE) is a consortium of organisations with known expertise in vulture conservation, which was established formally in February 2011. The common goal is to prioritise and help implement the actions required to conserve Asia’s critically endangered vultures.

The action plan of relevance to vulture conservation in India is the Vulture Conservation Action Plan for Nepal 2015–19, which was jointly prepared by the Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation and Bird Conservation, Nepal, which stresses on the removal of diclofenac from the environment.

The regional declaration on the conservation of South Asia’s critically endangered vulture species was adopted at the Symposium on Developing a Regional Response to the Conservation of South Asia’s Critically Endangered Vultures Species, which was held in Delhi in May 2012. It was decided in the symposium to work together to save the critically endangered species of vultures of the region. Constitution of the Regional Steering Committee (RSC) was one of its important decisions. The RSC was constituted in September 2012 with chairmanship on a two-year rotational basis. India was the first chair. The committee consists of Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan, one representative each from a leading NGO in each country, from the IUCN (co-chair), an INGO (to be nominated by Birdlife), Central Zoo Authority of India, Wildlife Institute of India, UN agency facilitating the development of the Global Environmental Facility proposals and the Chair of the SSC Vulture Specialist Group.

India will seek expertise and advice from all these conventions and plans.

Efforts in India at Vulture Conservation

A Vulture Care Centre (VCC) located within the Bir Shikargah Wildlife Sanctuary in the town of Pinjore, Haryana was set up in 2001 to study why vultures were dying in India. In 2004, the VCC was upgraded to become the country’s first Vulture Conservation and Breeding Centre (VCBC). It was renamed the Jatayu and Sparrow Conservation Breeding Centre, and is the world’s largest facility for the breeding and conservation of Indian vultures and the house sparrow. It is a collaborative initiative between the Haryana Forest Department and the Bombay Natural History Society to save the three species of vultures, the white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed, from the threat of extinction. Several other centres have been set up to protect and conserve vultures. In 2022, Uttar Pradesh will get its first vulture conservation and breeding centre at Pharenda in Maharajganj, located in the Gorakhpur Forest Division.

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