The Unscavenged Tables

Instead, the vultures head for a secluded part of the river, where they bathe and dry themselves. “They have already fed elsewhere. The bathing and drying ritual always follows a meal,” explains Sukhdeep Bajwa, a conservationist. It is only towards dusk, finally, that some Oriental White-backed Vultures (currently the most endangered vulture species in South Asia) and Himalayan Griffon head towards the ‘restaurant’ for an evening meal. The waiting officials can now take pictures to prove their ‘success’ to superiors.

But both they, and their bosses, know this is no success story. The idea behind setting up three vulture restaurants in the last six months in the Shivalik foothills of Gurdaspur district was that the carcasses fed here to vultures would be free of diclofenac, the anti-inflammatory drug used as a painkiller for humans and animals, and held squarely responsible for wiping out 99.9 per cent of the vulture population in South Asia. But officials admit there is no way of guaranteeing that the carcasses brought to the restaurant from the surrounding villages are actually diclofenac-free. Banned for veterinary use, the drug is still used clandestinely from the supply meant for human use.

Punjab is one of the three states (the others are Maharashtra and West Bengal) to set up such restaurants to save these highly endangered birds. Of the three restaurants in Gurdaspur district (chosen because there are some 300-odd vultures here, surviving in the wild), only one, at Kandola, is attracting vultures. The other two, at Chamror and Kathlaur, have failed to draw birds and so have been abandoned. Some Rs 10.5 lakh, allocated by the Union ministry of environment and forests, has been spent on setting up these restaurants in the last year. But the Punjab experience shows why an attractive concept has turned out, in practice, to be a waste of money and energy, at least in the Indian context.

Secondly, there is the diclofenac factor.  The drug’s incidence in cattle carcasses has declined from 10 to seven per cent after conservationists persuaded India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh to ban the manufacture, import and sale of veterinary diclofenac in 2006. But even 0.5 per cent diclofenac in an individual carcass plays havoc with vultures. They die of kidney failure within days of ingesting contaminated carcasses. As Dr Prakash points out, just one contaminated meal will kill a vulture. Only five per cent of Indian cattle bear traces of the drug, but even this has proved enough to decimate the vulture population.

Though an awareness campaign was held in Gurdaspur district before establishing the vulture restaurants, it hasn’t worked. Since meloxicam, the suggested alternative to diclofenac, is more expensive and not as effective, dairy farmers routinely use human-use diclofenac for their cattle. In contrast, in Chitwan, in Nepal, a ‘vulture restaurant’ has been successful, mainly because it has a ‘vulture safe zone’ around it. Unfortunately, whenever these vultures cross into India, they are at risk.

It is such fears that prevent those breeding vultures in captivity in India from releasing them into the wild. For example, despite breeding some 15 nestlings, the Vulture Captive Breeding Centre at Pinjore in Haryana cannot release them in the wild. Scientists at the centre point out that they can be released only in  ‘vulture safe zones’, non-existent in India.

Will they be there by 2016, the target year for releasing the birds into the wild? Well, the Union ministry of environment and forests has, just last week, launched the ambitious ‘Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction’ (SAVE) consortium of multinational vulture experts. Its job is to identify vulture safe zones in Asia to release captive-bred vultures there over the next 4-5 years. But as the Punjab experience shows, in India this may be easier said than done. The Nepal success story owes much to the fact that its ‘vulture restaurant’ and safe zone is entirely managed by the local community, which collects old cows from surrounding areas in ‘cow rescue centres’, and once they die a natural death, feeds them to vultures. But such a spirit, as Bajwa points out, is missing here. “Conservation,” he says, “needs to be taken out of the hands of target-hungry officials and entrusted to local communities.” Until that happens, India’s vulture restaurants won’t be earning any Michelin stars with conservationists—or with vultures.