There is a good news for the bird lovers of Uttar Pradesh who are fighting to a battle to save vultures as state government has banned use of Diclofenac medicines in curing other animals by the veterinaries.
Experts have opined that the population of vultures is on the decline due the use of Diclofenac medicine which is also affecting the environment adversely. Though the government of India had banned the use of diclofenac in the animals across the country but the medicine is being sold freely at the medical stores in the state.
Uttar Pradesh Animal Husbandry Council CEO Dr B B S Yadav announced here on Sunday that the medicine has been banned with immediate effect in the state. He said that the Drug Controller General of India has cancelled the license for use of Diclofenac for veterinary use and has ordered to phase-out the medicine in next three months time.
Yadav said that a directive has also been sent to all the Chief Veterinary officers and officers of the animal husbandry department about the decision of the government. According to a study, population of several species of vultures and other large scavenging birds worldwide have declined due to less availability of food, collisions with man-made structures, contamination, and poisoning.
Indian vultures have vanished because they fed on dead livestock, which were administered anti-inflammatory drugs like diclofenac, that increases the working life of cattle. Experts feel that the preferred vulture habitat, are alarmingly falling prey to diclofenac despite the government ban in 2006 on the production of drug for veterinary use. Three Critically Endangered Gyps vultures endemic to South Asia continue to decline due to the use of diclofenac to treat livestock.
After ban of diclofenac, the drug is still available in the market. Government of India banned the formulation, manufacture and import of veterinary diclofenac in 2006, but not not multi-dose vials. Meanwhile in UP,apprehending extinction of vulture in the country, Wildlife experts and foresters have evolved a strategy to set up a Vulture Safe Zones (VSZ) in the Terai belt on the Indo-Nepal border.
The experts and UP government are jointly working up strategies to set up a conservation centre for vultures, considered to be natural scavengers and whose population has drastically fallen in India. The state forest department, the Bombay Natural History Society and the Katarniaghat Foundation of UP are working out details of the project, Vulture Safe Zones.
The provision of ungulate carcasses at regular feeding stations called ‘vulture restaurants’ has been mooted to support vulture populations like being done in Africa, besides vulture breeding centre would be opened. The concerning aspect of the diminishing vultures in the country could be assessed as in late 1980s the population of nine species of vulture was around 80 million which has now reached an alarming number of just 4000.