Context: Union Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) launched a Vulture Action Plan 2020-25 for the conservation of vultures in the country.
Key Points

• Vulture numbers saw a steep slide — as much as 90 per cent in some species — in India since the 1990s in one of the most drastic declines in bird populations in the world.
• While the ministry has been carrying out a conservation project for vultures since 2006, the plan is to now extend the project to 2025 to not just halt the decline but to actively increase the vulture numbers in India.

Vultures in India

• There are nine recorded species of vultures in India — the Oriental white-backed, long-billed, slender-billed, Himalayan, red-headed, Egyptian, bearded, cinereous and the Eurasian Griffon.
• The Egyptian vulture is listed as ‘endangered’ while the Himalayan, bearded and cinereous vultures are ‘near threatened’.
• Need for the Vulture Action Plan: Crisis in Vulture Population
• Between the 1990s and 2007, numbers of three presently critically-endangered species – the Oriental white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed vultures — crashed massively with 99 per cent of the species having been wiped out.
• The number of red-headed vultures, also critically-endangered now, declined by 91% while the Egyptian vultures by 80%.
• The crash in vulture populations came into limelight in the mid-90s, and in 2004 the cause of the crash was established as diclofenac — a veterinary nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat pain and inflammatory diseases such as gout — in carcasses that vultures would feed off.

Significance of Vultures in the Ecosystem

• The scavenging lifestyle that gives them a bad reputation is, in fact, that makes them so important for the environment, nature and society.
• Vultures feeding on dead animals help areas getting rid of carcasses that, otherwise, would provide foul smells and scenery for a much longer period hence also known as nature’s cleanup crew.
• Vultures also play a valuable role in keeping wildlife diseases in check.

Objectives of the Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020-2025

• To ensure minimum use of Diclofenac.
• To Prevent the poisoning of the principal food of vultures, the cattle carcasses, with veterinary NSAIDs, by ensuring that sale of veterinary NSAIDs is regulated and is disbursed only on prescription and by ensuring that treatment of livestock is done only by qualified veterinarians.
• To carry out safety testing of available NSAIDs on vultures and to develop new ones which do not affect vultures.
• To ensure that DGCI must institute a system that automatically removes a drug from veterinary use if it is found to be toxic to vultures.
• To establish Additional Conservation Breeding Centres along with Vulture Conservation Centres with samples and information collected from the wild analysed and stored at these centres.
• To implement the Vulture Safe Zone programme at eight different places in the country where there are existing populations of vultures.
• To launch conservation plans for the Red-headed and Egyptian vultures, with breeding programmes for both.
• To declare a Vulture Safe Zone only when no toxic drugs are found in undercover pharmacy and cattle carcass surveys, for two consecutive years, and the vulture populations are stable and not declining.
• To build Four rescue centres for different geographical areas like Pinjore in the north, Bhopal in ventral India, Guwahati in Northeast and Hyderabad in South India.