|
India Baffled by Mysterious Vulture Die-Off
Loss of Scavengers Poses Threat to Human Health
 Listen to John Nielsen's report.
A pair of cliff vultures, Gyps indicus.
Photo: M. Virani/The Peregrine Fund
|
Peregrine Fund researcher Munir Virani holds a live vulture for tagging and release.
Photo: M. Gilbert/The Peregrine Fund
|
Villagers in India rely on vultures to dispose of animal carcasses.
Photo: M. Gilbert/The Peregrine Fund
|
June 26, 2002 -- India has lost one of its most important animals, and no one knows why. Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of healthy-looking vultures have dropped dead there. Two species of vulture that were once the country's most visible birds have all but vanished, and pathologists are at a loss to explain why.
The mysterious die-off, still spreading, has created serious public health problems and forced at least one religious crisis in India. NPR's John Nielsen reports for All Things Considered.
In India, the vulture is a sacred beast. In the Hindu mythology, it dies to save the life of a goddess. In Parsi culture, it eats the dead. A 2,000-year-old tradition calls for the community to lay out its dead at the top of the so-called Towers of Silence. Vultures used to descend upon the bodies, leaving behind just bones within hours. Now, few vultures flock to the towers and the Parsi have been forced to look for new ways to dispose of their dead.
Through the 1980s, the birds were everywhere. it wasn't unusual to see hundreds of vultures circling a dump or sitting in a single tree. Planes ran into them constantly over big cities.
Then the vultures started dropping dead. Local people said some of them seemed to die in mid-flight and tumble straight to the ground.
Martin Gilbert of the Peregrine Fund says he's never seen a species -- in this case two -- disappear so quickly. By the late 1990s, 90 percent of the white-back and long-billed vultures in India were gone, and an international ecological crisis was at hand. The Peregrine Fund's Rick Watson says vultures in Nepal and eastern Pakistan were also dying by then.
A search for the cause is currently underway. Pesticides aren't likely, since only the vultures are dying. Lethal toxins haven't yet been found in carcasses. "The only plausible cause is a disease factor," says Robert Risebrough, a toxicologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "It could be a virus that is resident in some other species, where it is probably harmless, that somehow jumped into the vultures."
It's now possible to go for days in India without seeing a vulture. Rat populations have exploded in their absence, and huge packs of feral dogs have taken over the dumps. The new scavengers are much more dangerous than the vultures were, and they're far less efficient scavengers. Risebrough says that is crucial in a country where sacred cows are almost as numerous as people.
"When [the cows] die, the vultures consume them. With no vultures, there's been a major problem in the disposal of carcasses to the point that in some areas, there's a major health hazard."
India doesn't have the money or equipment to root out the cause of the catastrophic die-off, and scientists say it's hard to make Americans care about the problem. But they should, says Rick Watson. The vulture was a common, widespread, far-ranging species that was thought to be invulnerable to human activity. In fact, it benefited from human society. And suddenly, unexpectedly, the bird has been almost wiped out. That, says Watson, could happen here, to any species.
In Depth
 Browse for more NPR stories about vultures.
Other Resources
• The Peregrine Fund
• Read more about the vulture die-off at NationalGeographic.com.
• Read a Sept. 2000 report on the vulture crisis at the National Birds of Prey Centre Web site.
• Read an Atlantic Monthly article on the disappearing vultures.
• The Bombay Natural History Society
|
