“Prior to the ban on veterinary diclofenac, the vulture population was decreasing at the rate of up to 40% a year. While this fact is encouraging, vulture population is still small and they are still vulnerable,” the study said.[break]
Populations of three Asian vulture species (oriental white-backed vulture, long-billed vulture, and slender-billed vulture) have declined by more than 99% in South Asia since the early 1990s due to the use of veterinary drug diclofenac, prompting IUCN to list them as critically endangered species.
The governments of India, Nepal and Pakistan banned veterinary use of the painkiller diclofenac in 2006 because of its lethal effects on vultures that feed on the carcasses of cattle and buffaloes treated with the drug.
“The slowing of the decline in vulture numbers across Nepal and India is the first sign that the government´s ban on veterinary diclofenac and local initiatives to prevent the use of diclofenac within vulture safe zones is having its desired impact,” said Khadananda Paudel from Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN) who is one of the researchers.
The study was undertaken across more than 15,000 kilometers of roads in western, central and eastern states of India and across 1,000 kilometers of roads in the lowland regions of Nepal, following the same routes and methodologies of earlier surveys in both the countries. Surveys were undertaken by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in India and Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN) in the lowland regions of Nepal.
Co-author of the research paper Dr Richard Cuthbert from the UK based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said, “The stabilization in the numbers of these three critically endangered vulture species in Nepal and India is really encouraging as previously their populations were nearly halving in number every year.”
Efforts to reverse the decline in vulture populations are being coordinated by a consortium of national conservation organizations and multi-national vulture experts. This initiative, Saving Asia´s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE), was launched in 2011 to help coordinate research, advocacy and implementation of the actions needed to prevent these birds from disappearing forever.
The second annual SAVE meeting was held in Kathmandu on the 5-6 November 2012 and was attended by representatives from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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