Date:04/07/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/07/04/stories/2006070402401200.htm

National

Vultures brought to breeding centre

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: Twelve sub-adult slender-billed vultures — a species threatened with extinction and whose numbers in the wild have dwindled to an estimated 200 pairs around the world — have been collected from different parts of Assam and brought to the vulture conservation and breeding centre in Rajabhatkhawa in north Bengal's Jalpaiguri district, the second such centre to have been set up in the country.

Also to be brought recently to the centre were two white-backed vultures — another species that faces extinction.

Plans to collect vultures

The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) that has set up the centre with the assistance of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the State Government plans to collect 25 pairs of slender-billed, long-billed and white-backed vultures from across the country for the centre by the end of the year. Its programme was discussed at a meeting between the BNHS authorities and officials of the State's Forest Department held here recently.

Chris Bowden, head of the Asian Vultures Protection Project of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Sandy, United Kingdom, which is financing the vulture conservation and breeding programme in the country, is scheduled to visit the centre next month.

Electric fencing

Principal Scientist, BNHS, Vibhu Prakash told The Hindu on Tuesday that seven aviaries have been set up at the centre and a "colony aviary" is being constructed, all cordoned off with electric fencing and spread across five acres of land. The vultures to be kept in the aviaries will be mainly juvenile birds brought over from States such as Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat from whom offspring could be expected from four to five years.

The vulture population in the country has dwindled by more than 90 per cent over the past decade, Mr. Prakash said.