Study of Population Status of Vultures in Gidh Karai, Jhalawar, Rajasthan
Author : Taruna Patidar and Dr. Surabhi Shrivastava
Abstract :
Vultures were the most common scavengers soaring on high air thermals in the sky till the 1980s. Unfortunately, the overall population crashed unprecedentedly to >95% first recorded in Bharatpur, India (Prakash, 1999; Gilbert et al., 2002; Prakash et al., 2003, 2012; Oaks et al., 2004) during the mid-nineties across South Asia. There had been an abundant population, but the dramatic decline severely affected them and mostly three resident Gyps species: Oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis), Long-billed vulture (Gyps indicus) and Slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) in the country estimated at 40 million individuals during this period (Prakash 1999, 2003; Gilbert 2003). By 2007, 99% of the three Gyps species had been wiped out to less than a lakh. It was because of the careless use of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), diclofenac (Oaks et al., 2004; Pain et al., 2008; Ogada et al., 2012; Margalida and Ogada, 2018) that was used to treat livestock cattle due to its easy availability and cost benefits prominently. Of the nine species of vulture found in different habitats in India, seven occur in the Indian state of Rajasthan (Ali & Ripley, 2007). Once commonly distributed, vulture species such as Oriental White-backed, Long-billed, and Slender-billed are now categorised as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened species and have been given the highest legal protection in Schedule-I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act (WLPA), 1972. In this paper, we studied population status of Indian vultures and Egyptian vultures within the study area (Gidh Karai) in the Jhalawar region of the Indian state of Rajasthan. In this study, we recorded the two resident vulture species that reside here in an abundant population at Gidh Karai, Jhalawar.
Keywords :
Conservation, decline, Gidh Karai, population status, vulture species
