Slender-billed vultures have declined by 97% since 1992 due to pesticide poisoning but the recent successful breeding by a captive pair has brought new hope to the species and other critically endangered Asian vultures.

The slender-billed vultures is now more endangered than the tiger with an estimated 1000 pairs remaining in the wild and the population is still in free-fall.

Last year saw the first successful captive breeding of Oriental white-backed vultures and there are encouraging signs that a third Critically Endangered species, the Long-billed vulture or Indian vulture, may breed in the centres next year.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’s (RSPB) Chris Bowden is in charge of the Society’s Asian vulture programme. He said: “This news is a huge boost to those of us fighting to save Asian vultures, which face extinction in the wild within the next decade unless we can prevent the veterinary use of Diclofenac, which causes acute kidney failure in vultures consuming the carcasses of treated livestock.”

A recent study found the Indian population of Oriental white-backed vultures is dropping by more than 40 per cent every year in India. This is one of the fastest recorded rates of decline for any species. For every 1000 oriental white-backed vultures recorded in India in 1992, only one remains today.

Scientists believe numbers of Oriental white-backed vultures in India could now be down to fewer than 11,000 individuals from tens of millions in the 1980s. Populations of long-billed and slender-billed vultures have dropped to around 45,000 and 1,000 birds respectively.

The vultures’ catastrophic decline has been driven by the veterinary drug Diclofenac. The birds die of kidney failure after eating the carcasses of livestock that have died within a few days of treatment with the drug.

Manufacture of the veterinary form of Diclofenac, used as an anti-inflammatory treatment for livestock, was outlawed in India in 2006, and although these veterinary formulations are disappearing, equally dangerous human formulations are instead being used to treat livestock.

Captive-breeding programmes are a vital part of the effort to save the vultures. One of the slender-billed vultures fledged this year was bred at the Pinjore centre, in Haryana, and the second at Rajabhat Khawa, in West Bengal. This year’s three Oriental white-backed vultures were also fledged at Pinjore, in Haryana.

Dr Vibhu Prakash, Head of the Bombay Natural History Society’s (BNHS) Vulture Breeding Programme, said: “As many more of the young birds reach maturity over the next two years, we confidently anticipate that breeding will really take off”.

Meanwhile in Nepal, an additional initiative led by the National Trust for Nature Conservation, Bird Conservation Nepal and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, with support from the Zoological Society of London and RSPB, has successfully collected 44 young Oriental white-backed vultures ready to breed in future.

Via RSPB

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