Michael Kahn, Reuters 29 Apr 08;
LONDON (Reuters) - Wild Asian vultures could become extinct in 10 years unless officials stop the use of a livestock drug that has caused the birds to decline faster than the dodo, British and Indian scientists said on Wednesday.
A new study shows the population of oriental white-backed vultures has plunged 99.9 percent since 1992 while the numbers of two species, the long-billed and slender-billed vultures, together have fallen by nearly 97 percent.
A wider ban of the veterinary drug diclofenac and more captive breeding centers are the only way to save the birds found mainly in India, the researchers said in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.
India banned manufacture of the veterinary form of the anti-inflammatory in 2006, but a version formulated for humans is still used to treat livestock, the researchers said. When the vultures feed on carcasses they ingest the drug, which shuts down their kidneys and kills them within days.
"The ban on diclofenac production for veterinary use was an excellent first step," Vibhu Prakash, a researcher at the Bombay Natural History Society and colleagues wrote. However, this action is insufficient on its own to save these species."
The birds are critical to the ecosystem and for human health in India because they are the primary means of getting rid of animal carcasses in the nation of some 1.12 billion people, added Andrew Cunningham, who worked on the study.
Their demise is has led to a sharp increase in dead animals around villages and towns, which has boosted the numbers of disease-carrying rats and rabid stray dogs, he said.
"This is a direct consequence of the decline of the vultures," Cunningham, a veterinarian at the Zoological Society of London, said in a telephone interview.
The researchers counted vultures in northern and central India between March and June last year. They surveyed the birds from vehicles along more than 160 sections of road totaling 18,900 kilometers.
The study followed four previous counts and was the first since 2003. The researchers warned that all three species could dwindle down to a few hundred birds or less to the verge of extinction in fewer than 10 years.
The researchers believe the number of oriental white-backed vultures in India could now be as low as 11,000 from tens of millions in the 1980s. Populations of the long-billed vultures have likely dropped to 45,000 while only an estimated 1,000 of the slender-billed species remain, they said.
The dodo was hunted to extinction barely 100 years after it was discovered in the 16th century.
(Reporting by Michael Kahn, Editing by Maggie Fox and Dominic Evans)
Asian vultures may face extinction in India, study warns
Yahoo News 4 May 08;
Asian vultures may face extinction in India unless a farm drug responsible for their large-scale decimation is banned outright, according to a report Sunday citing researchers.
The population of the oriental white-backed vulture has declined by 99.9 percent and the numbers of two other highly-endangered species by 97 percent since 1992 in India, a story in the Hindu newspaper said citing a study in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.
The study had not yet been released on the society's website and the authors were not immediately available for comment.
Conservationists say the vultures are fast vanishing because of livestock painkiller diclofenac, which India banned in 2006 after it was found that the birds absorbed toxic amounts of the drug as they scavenged animal carcasses.
But despite the ban on the drug's manufacture, it is widely available, according to BirdLife International, a global partnership of conservation organisations, which also quoted the study in a post on its website.
"Time has almost run out to prevent the extinction of vultures in the wild in India. The ban on diclofenac manufacture was a good start but a ban on the sale of diclofenac and other drugs known to harm vultures is vital," said co-author of the study Rhys Green.
"Efforts must be redoubled to remove diclofenac from the vultures' food supply and to protect and breed a viable population in captivity," lead author Vibhu Prakash was quoted as saying by the organisation.
The researchers estimated the numbers of white-backed vultures at 11,000 from tens of millions in the 1980s.
The long-billed vulture population is believed to be around 45,000, while the slender-billed vultures number around 1,000, the study said.
The study recommended setting up three more captive breeding centres for vultures, apart from an existing facility in northern India to save the birds.
Last year, the centre bred two chicks in the first such effort in the world, but the birds died within a month.
The centre said that it would press on with its conservation efforts despite the setback.
In India vultures also play a vital cultural role. Followers of the minority Parsi faith depend on them for disposal of their corpses. They consider the burial or burning of human remains to defile the elements.
