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Colony Monitoring
Monitoring of breeding birds at colonies has been the second main way of recording population trends in Vultures. Colony monitoring has been undertaken in Pakistan, Nepal and India. While the methods vary from site to site, monitoring typically includes monthly visits, recording the numbers of active nests, number of occupied nests, hatching success, chick survival and fledging success. Staff at BNHS and BCN have both been involved with colony monitoring, as well as monitoring that is being undertaken by BNHS volunteers in India and by local community groups in Nepal. The Ornithological Society of Pakistan and The Peregrine Fund have managed the programme of colony monitoring in Pakistan. Monitoring of colonies will continue, although due to the depletion in vulture numbers the size and number of remaining colonies is now far reduced.
Papers that arisen from colony monitoring include the following (follow links for pdfs):
Prakash, V., Pain, D.J., Cunningham, A.A., Donald, P.F., Prakash, N., Verma, A., Gargi, R., Sivakumar, S., Rahmani, A. R. 2003. Catastrophic collapse of Indian white-backed Gyps bengalensis and long-billed Gyps indicus vulture populations. Biological Conservation 109(3): 381-390.
Prakash, V., Green, R.E., Pain, D.J. Ranade, S.P., Saravanan, S., Prakash, N., Venkitachahalam, R., Cuthbert, R., Rahmani, A.R. and Cunningham A.A. (2007). Recent changes in population of resident Gyps vultures in India. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, 104, 129-135.
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