Postmortems revealed chalky white deposits on the birds’ organs, a sign of visceral gout. Once these symptoms appeared they usually died within 10 to 15 days,” he says. “We saw dead and sick vultures, with drooping necks. Photograph: Pallava Bagla/Corbis/Getty Imagesĭr Vibhu Prakash, the deputy director of BNHS, witnessed the drop in numbers while conducting research in Rajasthan’s Keoladeo national park in the mid-1990s. Dr Vibhu Prakash, deputy director of Bombay Natural History Society. India has a large bovine population – about 302 million according to a 2019 estimate – whose carcasses vultures feed on. That number dropped by more than 97% in the 1990s, largely because of the use of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) called diclofenac, routinely used to treat cattle. Researchers from BNHS, an organisation dedicated to wildlife research and nature conservation, estimate India was home to 40 million vultures in the 1980s. Since then, a successful breeding programme has seen new fledglings each year with hundreds successfully reared in four centres. These captive-bred birds are the first to be released into the wild since conservation efforts began about two decades ago, focusing on three critically endangered species: the slender-billed, the white-rumped and the long-billed or Indian vulture.

Similar releases took place in January of two white-rumped vultures in West Bengal and in October last year in Haryana, northern India, when eight birds were set free from the world’s largest vulture breeding facility. There is hope but it depends on how responsible society becomes Gradually, some of the released vultures perched on trees with their wild cousins, while others returned to the wire-mesh aviary where they had spent the previous few months getting acclimatised to their surroundings.

The birds were raised in a nearby breeding centre by BNHS, led by assistant director Sachin Ranade, as part of efforts to save India’s Gyps vultures. Eight critically endangered captive-bred white-rumped vultures cautiously emerged and within minutes were mingling with wild vultures, devouring the meat of carcasses left out by a team of researchers from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS). In February, the doors of an aviary in West Bengal’s Buxa tiger reserve were flung open.

Bombay royale born to be wild