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Population declines
Tens of millions of vultures used to be present across India, Pakistan and Nepal. The vast numbers of vulture present were due to the very large numbers of livestock reared across South Asia. Government statistics indicate that livestock numbers in India have exceeded 400 million since the 1980s and reached more than 500 million in 2005. In India and Nepal cows have a sacred status for Hindus and are not consumed. As a consequence very large numbers of livestock carcasses became available for vultures in Asia and became the principal food source for the resident species of vultures. Vultures were so abundant that the Parsi religion in India and Buddhist communities on the Tibetan plateau utilised vultures for sky burials in order to cleanly and efficiently dispose of human bodies.
The vulture declines in India were first quantified at Keoladeo National Park, Rajasthan, by Dr. Vibhu Prakash, Principal Scientist of the Bombay Natural History Society. Between 1985-1986 and 1996-1997 the population size of Oriental white-backed vultures declined by an estimated 97% at Keoladeo, and in 2003 this colony was extinct. These declines were coupled with high mortality of all age classes. Following the initial survey, in 2000 BNHS teams undertook over 11,000 km of road based surveys, repeating 6,000 km of road-transects previously surveyed for raptors in the early 1990s, and confirmed that declines of >92% had occurred in all regions across northern India (Prakash et al. 2003). Some birds appeared sick and lethargic for a protracted period before death. Across South Asia tens of millions of vultures have now died.
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