South Asia: saving endangered vultures

From BirdLife:

Nepal drug boost for vultures

02-08-2006

Hopes of saving Asia’s globally threatened vultures have been given a second boost by a drug company in Nepal.

In May, the Indian government said the livestock treatment diclofenac, which is responsible for the 97 per cent declines of three vulture species in most of Asia, would be banned as a veterinary drug within three months.

The vultures die as a result of kidney failure.

Now Nepal’s largest veterinary pharmaceutical firm is selling a replacement drug at the same price, prompting the Nepalese authorities to halt the domestic manufacture and import of diclofenac with immediate effect.

Until now, diclofenac has been significantly cheaper than the new, safe treatment, meloxicam.

“It is not too late for Nepal’s vultures.

The prompt removal of diclofenac and the introduction of meloxicam, along with local conservation initiatives, can bring these essential birds back from the brink of extinction.” —Dr Hem Sagar Baral, Chief Executive Officer, BCN

Numbers of the White-rumped Vulture Gyps bengalensis and the Slender-billed Vulture G. tenuirostris have plunged by 90 per cent in Nepal in ten years, and by 97 per cent in India and Pakistan.

Indian Vulture G. indicus has also suffered a similar decline and half of all the remaining vultures are dying every year.

The production of meloxicam by Medivet in Nepal, and the Nepalese import and production ban, is a major breakthrough for conservationists hoping to stop veterinary diclofenac use throughout Asia.

Vulture breeding program in India: here.

And here.

Update March 2007: here.

Slender-billed vultures discovered in Cambodia: here.

Cinereous vulture in Asia: here.

Black vultures in Spain: here.

Vultures in Guinea, Africa: here.

Vulture-killing drug now on sale in Africa: here.