Kolkata: The release of 20 vultures from Raja Bhat Khawa in West Bengal’s Baksa Tiger Reserve on February 10 is a historic moment for wildlife conservation in India. The movement of these birds – 13 critically endangered Oriental white-backed vultures held in captivity and seven rescued Himalayan griffons – is under constant surveillance as they fly through West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and towards Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. is likely to.
All thirteen captive-bred white-tailed vultures are sub-adults, fitted with satellite tags known as platform transmitter terminals (PTTs). Himalayan vultures may migrate to their breeding areas in Central Asia, China or the higher Himalayas. The next six months are crucial and will tell us how safe the surrounding environment is.
vultures died due to cattle medicine
The first 10 captive-bred white-backed vultures are to be released in 2021, then 10 more in 2022.
According to VCBC officials, the second set of vultures released have worked very well. They traveled to Assam while one went to Nepal and then Bangladesh before returning to India.
These past releases have shown that birds that have been kept and reared in captivity for many years are able to fly, soar, search for food and water, and join free birds. It is expected that the current release will further apply this finding and provide more information about the protection of the environment and the availability of food in the region.
“In the 1980s, there were an estimated four crore vultures in India. By the end of the 1990s, 99 per cent of the vulture population had been wiped out due to a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that was administered to cattle as a pain reliever,” said an assistant at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) Director Sachin Ranade, who runs the VCBC, told ThePrint. Vultures used to eat cattle that had taken the drug, which meant they were also ingesting the painkiller.
Giving the cause of death, Ranade said, “The medicine affected his kidneys.”
In 2004, the BNHS organized a three-day seminar in Himachal Pradesh to discuss ways to save three species of Indian vultures (white-tailed, long-billed, and slender-billed) on the brink of extinction. They are classified as Schedule 1 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 and as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“Banning the drug used on animals was the solution. But there was limited time as we were dealing with only one per cent of the remaining population. Opened four centers in the state,” said Ranade.
So far, 31 captive-bred vultures have been released from West Bengal and eight from Haryana.
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from capture to release
But the team also faced tough challenges. The breeding process of vultures is slow. They take five years to mature and lay only one egg a year. But the most difficult challenge is to tell the age of a mature vulture. Ranade said, “After five years, a young and an old vulture look alike.”
A vulture can live up to 70 years, but they needed juvenile vultures for the conservation process. And there was no way to differentiate between them.
The birds were caught from tall trees in West Bengal and brought to a conservation center in Alipurduar district.
The center employs 10 people, who look after the birds’ veterinary needs, husbandry and feeding.
It took 15 years for the VCBC to release the vultures. “In 2005, I started building an aviary. We had permission from the Forest Department to keep 25 pairs of vultures. We could not buy the entire stock as there were very few of them left,” Ranade said.
To capture a young bird, they had to climb tall trees and lure them out of their nests through trapping techniques. “Only 10-15 percent were adults or sub-adults,” Ranade recalled.
The vultures were fed goats bought from the market. The livestock were first kept under observation for 10 days to ensure that there was no drug in their system and then fed to the vultures before starting the breeding process.
Before the grand release, the birds are adapted to the habitat. This process is called soft release. “They are kept in a special house with an attached transmitter. Partition nets are made so that they can introduce themselves to other birds that will become their relatives and friends. Then they are slowly dispersed so that they do not feel threatened as this will disturb their flight,” Ranade said, calling the vultures flock-loving birds.
(Editing by Therese Sudeep)