Sharing some good news about increase in vulture numbers.

The scavenger eyes a comeback
Sudeshna Chatterjee, TNN, Jul 2, 2010, 04.42am IST

It has been six years in coming, but the vulture conservation centre in Pinjore, Haryana, has landed a breakthrough – 16 vultures bred in captivity for the first time, over the past three years, taking the total count to 136.

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) attributes its success to new methods being used for the first time, one of which is artificial incubation. The recent fledgelings hatched by that method include three long-billed and one white-backed vulture. “The Pinjore Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC) hopes to increase the productivity of these slow breeding and long living birds by adopting a process called double clutching,” said Dr Vibhu Prakash, principal scientist and head of the conservation breeding programme. “It involves removing the first eggs laid by the vultures and incubating them artificially. The vultures usually lay a second egg within three weeks if the first egg is removed which they are allowed to incubate. In this way, annually, two nestlings can be produced by a pair, instead of one.”

The 136 vultures at the Pinjore centre include the long-billed, slender-billed and white-backed species that are among the world’s fastest declining ones. “They used to be seen throughout India, particularly in the Gangetic plain. Now these are listed as critically endangered. Of the estimated 40 million in the early 80s, now there are just about 56,000 left. Of these, the slender-billed vultures are found mainly in Assam, though less in number. Their nestlings are also much more difficult to obtain. Captive breeding is the only solution to save all of them from extinction,” said Prakash. “The successful first attempt has given us hope for increasing the breeding rate of these slow breeding species.”

The conservation breeding programme is part of a 15-year project in association with various state governments that began with the setting up of the first VCBC in Pinjore in 2004.

The conservation breeding centres in Haryana, West Bengal and Assam hope to release the vultures in the wild when the legal ban on the use of veterinary drug Diclofenac is effectively implemented, said Dr Asad Rahmani, director of BNHS, which has been advocating the stringent enforcement of the ban.

Link - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/h...ow/6117438.cms