Maharashtra govt wants to bring vultures back to life

The Maharashtra forest department and The Corbett Foundation have joined forces to raise awareness about the conservation of vultures in the state and help in the recovery of the scavenging birds which are vital in maintaining the health of the ecosystemThe government wants people in remote villages to understand the importance of vultures and posters in local languages have been prepared to this endThe posters will be circulated across the state by the forest department animal husbandry department NGOs local communities and nature loversAn informative poster in Marathi has been developed in consultation with the Bombay Natural History Society BNHS and SAVE Saving Asiarsquos Vultures from ExtinctionThe poster highlights the problems faced by the vultures in Indiamdashone of the main threats being the toxicity of veterinaryuse nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs NSAID such as diclofenacIt was in the 1990s that the studies done by the BNHS highlighted the drastic decline of vulture populations across India due to diclofenac toxicity Based on this research veterinary use of the drug was banned in India in 2006Also read Mumbai Two endangered Indian Vultures spotted in TWSThe harmful drugsDespite this ban humanuse diclofenac was being used in veterinary treatments To prevent this in 2015 the government of India banned the production of multidose vials of diclofenac in human medicine However recent scientific findings also suggest that veterinary use of aceclofenac flunixin carprofen meglumine phenylbutazone and ketoprofen are also harmful to vulturesKedar Gore director of The Corbett Foundation said ldquoUnless the veterinary use of all these NSAIDs are severely restricted and safe alternative drugs like meloxicam and tolfenamic acid are promoted the sword of extinction will loom over these majestic and ecologically important birdsrdquoGorersquos organisation a SAVE associate and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature has been involved in vulture conservation research awareness and advocacy for over a decadeNeed to do moreThe forest department has also partnered with Ela Foundation and Sahyadri Nisarg Mitra to promote vulture conservation in the state Sunil Limaye PCCF Wildlife and chief wildlife warden Maharashtra said ldquoFor the past several years many insitu conservation programmes like protecting habitats promoting vulture restaurants and satellite tagging of the birds are being undertaken by the forest department But these efforts need to be supported by exsitu conservation measures like establishing a conservation breeding centre for vultures in the state which is also a part of the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation in India 20202025 released by the ministry of environment forest and climate changerdquoHe added that the Konkan western Maharashtra and the Vidarbha regions still have the requisite habitats needed to act as longterm breeding areas for the whiterumped Indian and Egyptian vultures which are native to the state