Celebrate First Annual International Vulture Awareness Day at National Aviary

By Laura Ellis

Pittsburgh, PA - The slow spiralling flight of vultures is one of nature’s most universal symbols of death. In recent years, the sight of these massive scavengers circling has taken on an additional meaning – signaling one of the world’s greatest wildlife catastrophes.

Vulture populations in south Asia and India, once numbering in the tens of millions, have seen declines of 95-99 percent, and many species could face extinction within the next 10 years. To draw attention to their plight, conservation groups across the world have established September 5 as International Vulture Awareness Day.

Dr. Todd Katzner, director of conservaton and field research at the National Aviary, has been studying vultures in Cambodia and Kazahkstan for the last 10 years in order to help conservationists gain a more accurate picture of the size of vulture populations.

Rather than using traditional measures that require capturing, marking and recapturing individual birds – a process that requires exceptional effort – the technique developed by Dr. Katzner and fellow researchers at Purdue University and Cornell University allows for the collection of data through a process that is entirely noninvasive.

Feathers shed at vulture feeding sites in the Tian Shan Mountains of Kazakhstan and in Cambodia are collected and exported to Cornell University for DNA analysis. The resulting data is enabling Dr. Katzner and his partners to generate resonable estimates of the size of vulture populations and evaluate how well individual vultures are surviving. In time, this information will be provided to conservation groups to aid in their work.

“Vulture declines were first observed 15 years ago by Indian ornithologist Vibhu Prakash, who saw the birds literally falling dead from their perches to the ground,” says Katzner. “Despite a digestive system capable of consuming anthrax-tainted meat without consequence, these vultures were dying from some kind of poisoning.

“In time the cause of vulture deaths in India was traced to the veterinary use of diclofenac – an anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat livestock. Diclofenac was found to be highly toxic to vultures, causing kidney failure within days of feeding from a tainted carcass.”

Today, where millions of vultures once flourished, only a few thousand remain. In India, cattle are revered and historically taken to the outskirts of a city or town after death. In the country’s hot climate, vultures once played a critical role in preventing disease through the consumption of rotting flesh. As their numbers decline, however, other scavengers and feral dogs are moving in, raising the threat of rabies and other diseases to both human and wildlife populations.

Progress is being made to halt the vulture death spiral. In a remarkable show of unity, international conservation groups worked together and with local governments in India, Pakistan and Nepal to phase out the use of diclofenac and replace it with meloxicam, a safe and effective NSAID alternative. Although some continue to use the drug illegally, diclofenac has now been officially banned for veterinary use in all three countries, and vulture populations in these areas are being closely monitored.

Throughout the region, conservationists are also now working to provide “clean” feeding stations for vultures, and captive breeding programs have been established in Pakistan and India, with another planned for Nepal.

“The National Aviary initiated surveys in Kazakhstan because we feared that vulture populations in the former Soviet Union could also be impacted by diclofenac,” says Katzner. “Furthermore, the massive economic changes in the former Soviet Union over the past 15 years have resulted in dramatic drops in the numbers of domestic and wild ungulates (hoofed animals), the primary food source for vultures.

“Humans have deliberately caused the extinction of many species; the story of how we have inadvertently brought about the imminent extinction in the wild of three species of Asian vultures is therefore a particularly poignant reminder that as the dominant force on the planet, we have a moral obligation to do all we reasonably can to ensure their survival,” says Katzner.

More information on the National Aviary’s vulture research can be accessed at http://www.aviary.org/cons/proj_vultures.php.

International Vulture Awareness Day is a project of the Birds of Prey Working Group of EWT in South Africa and the Hawk Conservancy Trust in England. Organizations in Africa, Europe, the Americas and South-Asia are celebrating this day with a variety of events worldwide. More information at www.ivad09.org.

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