When your diet consists of roadkill, how picky can you be? Well, if you’re a rare vulture living in Nepal, you may be lucky enough to sink your talons into an antibiotic-and- hormone-free cattle carcass courtesy of Bird Conservation Nepal.
“Vulture numbers have plummeted catastrophically in south Asia since the 1990s,” New Scientist reports, and researchers have linked the decline to “vultures eating dead cattle treated with the anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac.”
So BCN has created a sort of bistro for the birds, stocked with carcasses of cattle that haven’t been treated with the drug. Diclofenac is banned in Nepal, but, according to New Scientist, “the ban is largely ignored. As a result, the population of vultures in mountainous Nepal is estimated to have dipped to only about 500 nesting pairs ” down from about 50,000 in 1990.”
Thanks to the BCN’s efforts, the number of white-rumped and slender-billed vultures—the two species decimated by diclofenac—has nearly doubled. No word on what impact diclofenac-laced livestock is having on the non-feathered population of Nepal, though.
Learn more about Bird Conservation Nepal here.
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Tagged as:conservation • Nepal • vultures
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ORGANIC VULTURES
This organic vulture blog is something to really take note of.
The vulture serves as Mythological creature once known as the Griffin and the guardian of the doorway to the other worlds. While there hunting habits of eating road kill or dead animals might seem barbaric they actually are serving an extremely valuable and necessary function. It limits infections and bacteria from corpses that could otherwise spread to other animals who do not have the resistance. They in turn prevent the spread of the disease. Vultures have a very distinct digestive system. The digestive tract contains chemicals that kill virulent bacteria . What this means is that this sacred bird should be examined not only for its ability to keep our environment clean but possibly a symbol of greater thinking about how animals and other nature are working to keep our planet in tune with our life cycle and our continued survival.
Excerpts from ANIMAL SPEAK by Ted Andrews
Dharma Dog