Of the 14 baby vultures reared inside an artificial cage at the CNP"s breeding center five years ago, a dozen had laid their eggs last year, but none of them has hatched so far, informed Bed Bahadur Khadka, chief of the center.[break]
“Everything seemed well in the beginning. The vultures built their nests and laid the eggs inside the concrete cage last year,” said Khadka, who is also deputy conservation officer at the national park. “But none of the eggs have hatched.”
Alarmed by a sharp decline in the vulture population, CNP had set up the breeding center, and built the cage at a cost of Rs 1.2 million five years ago.
Conservationists remain baffled by the problem.
“There could be a problem in the process of egg incubation inside the cage, or the vultures, which were brought away from their natural habitat, are yet to learn how to hatch. There might be yet other reasons,” said Khadka.
After preparing their nests, vultures lay their eggs toward October and November. A vulture usually lays only one egg a year.
CPN officials have nonetheless kept their fingers crossed.
“Vulture breeding centers in India had reported a similar problem, but the eggs eventually hatched,” said Khadka.
The conservationists at the national park are also weary of local residents who still appear apathetic toward the rapid decline in the population of vultures that help keep our environment clean by devouring dead animals and decaying material.
“It"s the medicine Dichlorofenac fed to domestic animals that has been killing off these scavengers,” lamented Khadka. “When a vulture consumes the carcass of such animals, the medicine residue affects its kidney and it gradually dies.”
The number of vultures has decreased drastically over the past 14 years. “Chitwan once used to be replete with a wide range of vulture species, but they are hardly visible now,” said Hem Subedi, a former staffer at the Chitwan branch of Bird Conservation Nepal.
Related story
Conservationists worried as vultures at CNP breeding center fai...
