The vanishing tribe of vultures
SOON after I shifted to my present place of residence from the City Beautiful, what was most scary was the presence of a large number of vultures perched on trees not far from my house. I first noticed these unwelcome neighbours one evening when I saw a huge creature jumping from one tree branch to another. I got to know that the commotion on the trees was caused when vultures would come back home in the evening after the day’s toil for food.
The trees are still there, but the bulky winged residents are missing. It seems that they have gone to places like Ukraine and Gaza, where it is easier for them to find food these days because of the dance of death and destruction there. If they fail to find human corpses to fill their bellies, they can easily have animal carcasses to satiate their hunger.
Vultures were in the news soon after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. According to media reports, vultures, eagles and other such birds of prey helped the Israeli army locate the bodies of many persons who died in missile strikes inside Israel. Tracking devices were fitted on these predators for transmitting vital information.
These carnivorous birds, particularly vultures, which serve as scavengers, are no longer seen in our villages, too. I noticed this during a recent visit to my village in UP. There were a large number of huge trees like those of peepal, pakkar and jamun where one could find vultures, eagles and other such birds living undisturbed. This has become a thing of the past. A disturbing development, indeed, as the disappearance of vultures may considerably harm the ecosystem and lead to large-scale environmental contamination.
The Indian vultures find themselves on the Red List (endangered species) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. As a result, the Parsis are gradually giving up the practice of leaving their dead at the Tower of Silence for birds like vultures to swoop down and finish off the corpses.
In 1991-92, there were 40 million such ungainly birds in India. But, according to the latest statistics, 99 per cent of them have disappeared from our midst. The main cause for this state of affairs is the large-scale use of drugs like diclofenac (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug). Though banned in India since March 2006, it is being used to protect the health of the livestock. When vultures eat the flesh of such animals, they die of kidney failure in most cases. The ban on the use of such dangerous drugs, as part of the Vulture Action Plan of the Union Environment Ministry, has hardly been able to improve the situation.
In any case, the vulture remains the most hated bird as it is associated with death and destruction. People hardly remember Jatayu — the big bird mentioned in the Ramayana — who tried to save Sita from the clutches of Ravana.
