Vulture awareness day: WWF screens documentary to highlight Gyps vulture crisis

Increasing group size at Changa Manga facility seen as a challenge.

LAHORE:

World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (WWF-Pakistan) on Monday arranged a seminar at Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) to celebrate International Vulture Awareness Day 2014.

The seminar featured a documentary Missing Vultures drawing attention to the Gyps vulture crisis.

WWF regards the white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis) as one of its priority species for conservation. The species has been listed as critically endangered by the IUCN.

Uzma Saeed, conservation coordinator at WWF-Pakistan, highlighted the ongoing in-situ and ex-situ vulture conservation initiatives of the organisation.

She said the major achievement of the ex-situ conservation project had been the successful lobbying with the government of Pakistan to ban the sale and manufacture of the diclofenac sodium. She said funding and increasing the group size at the vulture facility in Changa Manga remains the biggest challenge.

Saeed said the number of active nests of the white-backed vulture at Nagar Parkar, Sindh, had been observed increasing gradually over the past four years.

She stressed the need for spreading the word among academia and the general public to help stop the illegal use of diclofenac sodium.

The seminar was part of activities undertaken by vulture conservationists around the world in the first week of September.

International Vulture Awareness Day was initiated by the Birds of Prey Programme, South Africa and the Hawk Conservancy Trust, UK. The initiative was later expanded to an international event. It highlights the conservation of vultures to a wider audience as well as the important work being carried out around the world.

Pakistan saw a rapid decline in the population of the white-backed vulture in 2000-2004, Saeed said.

This was primarily due to the use of diclofenac sodium, a drug administered to livestock. She said when vultures fed upon the carcass of such livestock, it caused immediate renal failure in the form of visceral gout.

The drug has been effectively banned since the year 2006. However, bringing the population back up to a sustainable level still requires tough conservation work, she said.

WWF-Pakistan is carrying out ex-situ work in the form of a restoration centre in Changa Manga where the current population of white-backed vultures is 14. The aim of the centre is captive breeding and maintenance of a safe population of the species.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2014.