Vulture conservation in India
Topic: Biodiversity and its Conservation · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Vulture conservation in India is the effort to save vultures after their numbers fell by over 95% from the 1990s onwards. Vultures are scavengers: they eat dead animals and so clean up carcasses. The cause of the fall was diclofenac, a painkiller given to cattle. Vultures that ate the carcasses of treated cattle died of kidney failure. India banned diclofenac for animal use in 2006. Captive breeding centres and the Vulture Action Plan 2020–25 followed.
Example
The breeding centre at Pinjore in Haryana raises vultures in captivity so that they can later be released into the wild. The white-rumped vulture, one of the worst-hit species, is now listed as Critically Endangered.
Don't confuse with
- Habitat loss: this is the biggest cause of biodiversity loss in general. Vultures, however, crashed mainly because of a drug (diclofenac) entering the food chain, not because their habitat was cleared.
Related concepts
- Project Elephant
- One-horned rhinoceros
- Asiatic lion
- Project Cheetah
- Gharial
- Hangul
- Project Hangul
- Red panda
- Snow leopard
- Great Indian Bustard