Haryana to release eight rare vultures bred in captivity

:The Haryana forest department will soon release eight vultures of an endangered species that were raised in captivity, with satellite transmitters attached to them to track their journey in the wild.

The Union government has given its nod to attach satellite transmitters to the vultures and this will be a first-ever release of such species of vultures, a Haryana government spokesperson said. The state forest department has deposited the fee with the Union ministry of telecommunications, which will soon intimate the frequencies on which the satellites will operate.

The population of vultures had started declining rapidly in the 1990s. Haryana became the first state to start their conservation and reintroduction into the wild. Last year, the central and the state governments had started reintroduction of vultures into the wild from the Jatayu conservation breeding centre at Pinjore, which houses 226 birds of three critically endangered resident Gyps vultures, namely whitebacked vulture, long-billed vulture and slender-billed vulture.

This conservation centre had found that the veterinary drug, diclofenac, was the major cause of the crash in vulture population. Vultures get exposed to the drug while feeding on the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug before death. The centre was able to convince the Centre to ban the drug for veterinary use in 2006.

Earlier, wing-tag was tucked into each such bird for its identification and it could be followed for 45 days. By then, it successfully started locating food and water and began flying very high into the sky. This was for the first time that successful reintroduction of vultures into the wild was carried out. However, it was not possible to follow the birds further because no tracking device was put on them.