The vultures that drop out the sky

Midnite Toker

One of the highlights of my last trip to India was a visit to Orchha in Madhya Pradesh. The rambling old Jehangir palaces and temples held an unexpected treat - vultures.
<img border="0" src="http://www.indiamike.com/newsimages/Indianvulture.gif" align="left" width="144" height="175">

These birds, when observed in the early morning, seemed like part of the stonework - gargoyles placed on high towers by the 17th Century builders. As the day got warmer and air began to rise, so the vultures launched themselves and began spiralling upwards on the thermals. It seemed as timeless a picture as the sandstone monuments around me. Always was and always would be so...

Yet I was wrong. Vultures are under serious threat all over India. They have vanished in many places. The white-backed vulture, once common throughout the sub-continent, is now very rare. Over 90% of India's vultures have already disappeared, with the 1990s being the decade of their greatest die-off. They would literally drop dead - sometimes falling out of the air in mid-flight. Opinions vary about the cause of their spectacular decline. Some speculate that a new disease is infecting the vultures, others say the effects of India's passionate DDT use is finally reaching the upper levels of the food chain.

It has had effects on both the environment (dead carcasses left to rot and become health hazards) and religion (Parsis rely on vultures for their "sky burial" of the dead).

Some important links to read more about Indian vultures and their crisis:

India Baffled by Mysterious Vulture Die-Off (NPR news);
Change in the pecking order (Guardian);
INDIA: Vultures under threat (Asia Pacific);
What's Ailing Asia's Vultures (National Zoo);
Vanishing vultures (Frontline).

©FREE!, Midnite Toker 2003

__________________
travel tips, blog, downloads, panorama photos, online security, tokes:
the tokezone

Alan D

Interesting post M_T. I too remember the Long-billed Vultures at Orchha and sitting on the rooftop of the Palaki Mahal watching them for hours. We found a newly dead bird at the base of one of the temples and couldn't figure our what had happened to it.

When we first returned to India in 1996 there were White-backed Vultures sitting on the tops of high buildings in the centre of Delhi. Over the next couple of years they gradually disappeared. I would guess the pollution at that time was another factor in their disappearance. They were fairly common at Bharatpur also in 1996 but only the odd bird is now seen.

There was a theory that a viral disease was affecting vultures but personally I would go for the pesticide theory based on the effect of chemicals, like aldrin and dieldrin used in USA and UK during the 50's. Many of the species of birds at the top of the food chain became scarce or rare. It is only now, that 40 years later, the Common Buzzard had again become a common sight in the English countryside.

I also noticed recently in the Indian hills that the vulture populations seem to be OK there, including quite a few white-backs, possibly due to less intensive agriculture, much less cultivated area and lower use of chemicals.

The popular book that really alerted people to the effect of agrochemicals on wildlife was Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" published in the early 60's.

Midnite Toker

Alan, now I think back, I can also remember the vultures in Delhi from my first time there in 1980. It didn't register when I saw them - I was on one of those old Harley Davidson "six" seaters chugging down Chandni Chowk - I thought the vultures were part of the scenery like everything else. Yet I distinctly recall a great mass of them wheeling around in the sky above. They definitely weren't red kites - still plenty of those around, although one wonders for how long.

There are probably few friends of vultures outside bird enthusiasts, although many people I met in Orchha spoke of their astonishment at seeing such massive birds perched on the temples there. I think it's hard to get people interested in them as one might in, say, tigers or other "cuddlies." To the casual observer, they seem like things we'd be better without.

Yet the effect of Indian vultures' disappearance on tourists will not be insignificant. Without vultures to clear up all the dead cows around in cities and villages, packs of feral dogs have moved in to eat the carrion. One billion people in India - about twice that many dogs, I'd guess... Many of the dogs are infected with rabies. Yes, the danger of rabies is rising as fast as the vulture population is falling. Sadly, the swelling dog numbers (feral cats also) are affecting other ground-nesting birds as well, as dogs have no discrimination between carrion and nestlings. Vultures only eat dead meat.

abracax

Actually, the vultures and other large carrion birds are dying off right across Asia and Africa as well. This suggests the involvement of infections as well as environmental change and human additions to the environment. I'll never forget the day I saw a white-backed vulture flying along the valley up above Old Manali. I thought at first it was an eagle with a few crows flying around next to it, and then I realized that the crows were in fact eagles! Quite magnificent.

__________________
He travels fastest who pays for a cab.

-m2-

interesting post and articles...wasn't aware the problem so serious .... sometimes you don't notice things changing until it's pointed out as you only see a small part of the picture .. vultures such a magnificently ugly bird and play such an important role in the eco-system. I'd hate to get anywhere near one of those garbage dumps with the packs of wild dogs and feral cats...yikes.

archits

these vultures were once a problem near the airports- they would collide with the aircrafts !

then they cleaned up the areas surrounding the airports.

maree

Here is an Orchha vulture:

vulture

He's on one of the Jehangir Mahal pavilions. In Orchha go and sit on top of the Chaturbhuj Temple and watch the vultures catch the thermals and the dozens of green parrots darting around you. I did see a dead vulture on a roof at the chhatris....guess he may have been a victim of this disease.

paan wallah

yeah i was sitting there last year at the same place watching them for hours....great pic!!!!

Alan D

I'm just bumping this thread up because there seems to have been further developments in the disappearing vultures story.

The Times of India has just printed an account of how researchers at Washington State University have come to the conclusion that a widely used, anti-inflammatory veterinary drug called diclofenac may be responsible.

There is still no concensus on what has caused the decline in vulture species (especially the White-Backed Vulture) in the Indian sub-continent. Other theories include an avian virus and agricultural chemicals.

As vultures only live on the flesh of dead animals the problem still remains on how to raise their numbers back to previous levels.