| India's Disappearing Vultures |
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| Written by Nava Thakuria | |
| Wednesday, 10 June 2009 | |
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Page 1 of 2  Who will eat the Parsi dead?
India's vultures are disappearing from the country's skies, declining by as much as 99 percent from their original numbers, with the remainder dying at a rate of more than 40 percent annually, victims of pollution, declining habitat, poisoning, urbanization and a host of other problems, conservationists say. Although the phenomenon has been documented for more than a decade, nothing appears to be slowing the decline. That has posed a particular problem for the country's Parsis, a dwindling population themselves, whose religion demands that they leave the bodies of their dead above ground, to be picked clean by the birds. The Parsis, who fled Persia --the present day Iran -- centuries back and made India their permanent homeland, practice the religion of Zoroastrianism. About 100,000 live in major cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. According to their religious practice, the dead bodies cannot be buried or burnt because the corpses could pollute the Panchabhootam (earth, water, air, ether and fire). Hence their bodies are left in a high-rise ‘Tower of Silence' to be consumed by the scavengers. "Unfortunately the vultures have disappeared from our region and a sustained breeding project for vultures has become essential," said Khojeste P. Mistree of the World Alliance of Parsi and Irani Zoroastrians, in an interview. "The vulture happens to have been the first scavenger of the world and hence they should be brought back for a sustained ecological balance." How long there were will be enough Parsis around to satisfy the vultures is another question. According to "Parsi Khabar," a website for the Parsi community in India, the Zoroastrian sect's numbers are diminishing because of self-imposed discouragement of intercommunity marriages, leading to inbreeding. Members of the community from Hyderabad point out that by rough estimates there are just 70,000 Parsis in Mumbai and 1,200 in Hyderabad. Many Mumbai Parsis have been pursuing a plan to breed vultures in captivity. However, Minal Shroff, the chairman of the Bombay Parsee Panchayat, which runs the Tower of Silence, said scientists studying the proposal shelved it, saying it will not be possible since vultures appear to be particularly susceptible to a ubiquitous anti-inflammatory veterinary drug called diclofenac. It is cheap and can be used for treating cattle, buffalo, sheep and goats as well as human beings. Accordingly, in Assam and other areas, conservationists have started captive breeding programs that face problems, but vultures are notoriously hard to get to reproduce. They are monogamous, mating for life and producing perhaps no more than a single egg per year after reaching breeding maturity at five years of life. Critics maintain that the captive breeding programs are being mismanaged and robbing wild populations as the captive breeders steal eggs from native nests. Vibhu Prakash, the principal scientist for the vulture conservation breeding program at the Bombay Natural History Society, said some nine species of vultures in the wild numbered 40 million birds in the early 1980s. Today, only about 60,000 birds are left. Nor, says Dr Prakash, are other countries in South and Southeast Asia in any better shape. Vultures have been almost wiped out in Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Singapore as well as South Asia. Vultures do not hunt living animals but depend on the carcasses of livestock and wildlife for their primary food supplement. The scavenging birds that way help in keeping the environment clean. And, ugly though they may be, they are an integral link in the natural chain, eating the flesh of carcasses completely and cleanly. The birds thus prevent the spreading of severe diseases like rabies and anthrax among the wildlife, livestock and humans. A mature vulture may weigh up to 10 kgs and needs almost half a kilogram of meat daily. The most common theory is that the birds are dying from eating meat with high percentages of diclofenac residue. Scientists suspect that the diclofenac remains active for a longer period in the carcasses of treated animals. The drugs reportedly cause dehydration, with the birds soon dying of visceral gout and kidney failure. "We found that, over 75 percent of vultures which were discovered dead or had died of visceral gout had diclofenac in their tissues," Prakesh said.
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