The antidote to vanishing vultures

A slow, deliberate flapping filled the air. My skin pricked, my breath stalled: my body, before my mind, knew I am in the company of a great beast. I looked up, blinking at the ice-blue Himalayan sky, and stared as a shadow flung itself over me. I was looking at something that not many have seen, but I hope will get to.

A King vulture, dark-eyed and red-headed, was flying with slow paces over my head, leaving the side of a pine-clad mountain and moving towards the sheer drop. I kept watching -- even from a distance, a mature vulture is an impressive sight. Unlike other vultures, the Asian King or the Red-headed vulture is different because of its colour. While others are smattered with browns, off-whites and blacks, the King has a head that is best described as pinkish-red. It also has ruches of skin on its neck, which may make it look like a turkey than a vulture to some. In all, the bird has a flamboyance that many would not associate with vultures.

Sadly, much like flowers that grow at a high altitude, or cycad plants that take years to mature, the rare Asian King Vulture (like many other vultures) may easily be overlooked. Its population has seen a recent crash and the bird is now critically endangered -- it is surmised that the veterinary use of diclofenac and similar drugs is fatal to them. With lesser birds remaining in the wild, their sightings are fewer -- the result being generational amnesia. This means people are forgetting they share the world with such a magnificent animal. 

That day as I watched the King vultures -- one with dark eyes, one with whitish eyes, female and male, respectively -- I waited for the birds to wheel back towards me. I was in a forest in Uttarakhand, and I knew the vultures were around because they may have found something. A movement broke the stillness at the corner of my eye -- a large thing, going plop, plop, on the ground. It was a young vulture -- grey, white and brown. A Himalayan griffon. Soon, another bird -- this one is sacred to the Egyptians -- the Egyptian vulture also landed close by. A carcass was nearby, and that’s why so many different kinds of vultures had gathered. 

Because many vultures gather to feed on a single carcass, the contents of a single meal can make or break them. In April this year, 100 Griffon vultures -- the same species I saw hopping in the Western Himalayas -- died after eating a poisoned carcass in Assam. Nineteen vultures died in 2020, and 39 in 2019 of the same reasons in the same state. Tragically, some of the carcasses were poisoned to kill stray dogs.

Once common like crows, vultures are today negotiating a maze of toxicity and poison. While other species may be affected by climate change or permanently lost habitats, vultures are dying because we played chemist. 

We must make sure we remove harmful drugs, and replace them with safe options. The fate of nature’s most effective clean-up crew is squarely in our hands.

Neha Sinha is a Conservation biologist and author. Twitter: @nehaa_sinha