The Hindu : A mystery solved, the killer found

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 01, 2003

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A mystery solved, the killer found

By Sunny Sebastian

JAIPUR MAY 31. The mystery behind the death of hundreds of vultures in India, Pakistan and Nepal has been solved. And curiously enough, it is neither the pesticide nor the virus — as generally suspected by experts the world over — which had been killing whitebacked and longbilled vultures in hordes, but a medicine widely used in India and Pakistan to treat cattle, especially buffaloes.

Professor Lindsay Oaks of Washington State University, working in Pakistan with the support of Peregrine Fund, has come out with the finding that Diclofenac, a widely used painkiller and anti- inflammatory drug, is behind the large-scale morbidity and mortality of the vulture species.

Diclofenac, which is found in a large number of products used by veterinarians in the treatment of sick cattle and buffaloes, turned out to be the killer after researchers sifting through many suspected sources such as pesticides, poison and metals all tested negative. The decline of the vulture population in India was first noticed by the scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society, Vibhu Prakash, in the late 1990s while studying the birds in the Keoladeo Ghana National Park. He reported a 90 per cent decline in the numbers of the whitebacked vultures inside the park. Large-scale mortality among the longbilled species was reported from the nearby hills of Bayana, also in Bharatpur district of Rajasthan.

According to Robert W. Risebrough, a toxicologist working on California Condor, the tissues of 23 vultures that had died with gout symptoms tested the presence of Diclofenac while no such substance was present in the tissues of vultures that died of other causes.

In another experiment, the tissues from vultures, which had died of the symptoms under investigation when fed to healthy birds, caused the death of the latter.

``The vultures who were fed with a very small amount of Diclofenac died within a short time,'' Dr. Risebrough said in an e-mail message today to Mr. Harsh Vardhan, his friend and conservationist in Jaipur who had accompanied him to the Ranthambhor National Park to record the decline of the vulture population during his previous visit to India.

``The people who have given their opinion on the findings are unanimous in believing that all the affected species of vultures could become extinct if the present use pattern of the drug continues,'' Dr. Risebrough noted.

He suggested keeping at least 50 birds of each species in captivity till the use of Diclofenac is discontinued.

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