Captive breeding centre for vultures in Assam soon

India's News.Net
Wednesday 12th September, 2007 (IANS)

The vulture population in Assam is fast declining and a conservation organisation is setting up a captive breeding centre for the birds in the state to reverse this trend.

The centre is being built near the Rani forest range near Guwahati by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to hand-raise and release vultures in the wild. The birds, which numbered in tens of thousands in the northeastern state, have been reduced to a couple of hundreds.

'We plan to captive breed at least 100 pairs in a span of 15 years as part of the project,' Bibhu Prakash of BNHS told IANS.

'Though at least 600 pairs are needed to maintain their breeding population in the wild, we hope they will soon multiply and reach that figure once we start releasing them,' he added.

'Four slender billed and a white-backed vulture, which were housed in CWRC (Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation) in Kaziranga, have been sent to BHNS for the breeding programme,' said Prasanta Boro of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI). These birds were rescued from upper Assam.

'Vultures take at least five-six years to lay an egg and about a month to hatch. And two more years are needed to hand-raise the hatchlings before they would be ready for release. Over the period, we would bring more birds into the breeding programme,' Prakash said.

There are fewer than 200 slender billed vultures in the wild today, once found extensively in Assam. Two other species, white-backed vulture and the Himalayan griffon, are also equally threatened.

Over 90 percent of the genus gyps vultures across the country have died and experts blame the decline on the intake of the drug Diclofenec through contaminated carcasses. The drug was once widely used as painkillers in livestock.

Though in Assam, cases of vultures dying due to Diclofenec have not been established yet, poisoning and malaria related deaths have been common.

'In some areas, vultures died after consuming poisoned carcasses that were left behind by angry villagers to kill predators who lifted their cattle,' said Apurba Chakraborty of the Guwahati Veterinary College.

'Circumstantial evidence in 10-20 cases near Boku Saigaon and in the Kaziranga region last year confirmed similar type of poisoning,' he said.

'The construction of the centre would be completed by September end,' said Debojit Das of BNHS. He manages the centre in Guwahati.

'Once the birds are ready, we plan to release them in a batch of 20. But before that we would study the site to rule out the chances of poisoning and disease,' Prakash said.

Vultures are important scavengers. Their decline in some areas has led to the increase in population of stray dogs and crows - putting people at risk from rabies and other diseases.

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