India’s first captive-bred endangered vultures set free

[FfFfFfFF 58,120]

Numbers of the country’s carrion-loving birds dropped by over 97% in the 1990s. Now, a successful breeding scheme is giving them a boost.

The doors of an aviary in West Bengal’s Buxa tiger reserve were flung open. Eight critically endangered captive-bred white-rumped vultures cautiously emerged and within minutes were mingling with wild vultures, devouring the meat of carcasses left out by a team of researchers from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS).

The birds were raised in a nearby breeding centre by BNHS, led by assistant director Sachin Ranade, as part of efforts to save India’s Gyps vultures.

These captive-bred birds are the first to be released into the wild since conservation efforts began about two decades ago, focusing on three critically endangered species: the slender-billed, the white-rumped and the long-billed or Indian vulture.

Since then, a successful breeding programme has seen new fledglings each year with hundreds successfully reared in four centres.

Breeding vultures is a slow process – they mature when they are about five years old and lay only one egg a year. The team uses natural and artificial incubation methods to raise chicks of the three critically endangered species in captivity. Today, there are more than 700 vultures across the breeding centres.

Source - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/19/india-critically-endangered-vultures-wild-release-aoe

[sarahb 17,188]

Aww, reminds me of the conservation of the California Condor