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Significant milestones for the vulture programme
1998 -- Anecdotal observations and counts of vultures at Keoladeo National Park indicate a decline in numbers in India
1999 -- Decline in vultures numbers in India is matched by similar declines in Pakistan and Nepal
2000 -- Research in to the cause of the decline is initiated in South Asia, investigating the potential role of food shortages, poisoning, use of pesticides, disease or other factors in the deaths and rapid decline of vultures
2003 -- Nationwide surveys across India indicate vultures have declined by more than 90% in comparison to populations in the early 1990s, and that an abundance of carcasses and breeding habitat (large trees and cliffs) indicate that these factors are not important for the decline in numbers
2003 -- Researchers from Pakistan and The Peregrine Fund discover that the veterinary drug diclofenac is widely used for treating livestock in Pakistan and is toxic to vultures
2004 -- Work in India and Nepal confirms the presence of diclofenac residues in vulture carcasses with visceral gout and the widespread availability and use of this drug by veterinarians
2004 -- Vulture Recovery meetings in Nepal and India produces a "Diclofenac Manifesto" and "Vulture Recovery Plan" signed national and international conservation organisations with the support of national governments stating the need to ban the veterinary use of diclofenac, and the urgent requirements to find vulture safe alternative drugs and to capture and establish vulture conservation breeding centres
2004 -- The vulture research facility at Pinjore, Haryana State, India, is enlarged and converted in to Asia's first Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre
2006 -- Safety testing on African and Asian vultures demonstrates that an alternative veterinary drug, meloxicam, is safe for vultures and other scavenging birds as well as effective for treating livestock
2006 -- The governments of India, Nepal and Pakistan ban the manufacture and importation of veterinary diclofenac
India's Ministry of Environment and Forests produces a vulture action plan to tackle the conservation crisis within the country
2007 -- Repeat nationwide surveys of vultures across India confirm the continued decline of vultures, with numbers of Oriental white-backed vultures now reduced by 99.9% in comparison to 1992
2008 -- Vulture Conservation Breeding Centres in India breed its first two Oriental white-backed vultures to be bred in captivity, breeding activity commences in India's two other breeding centres in Assam and West Bengal
Nepal constructs it's own Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre
2009 -- Breeding centres in India produce 3 white-backed vulture fledglings and two slender-billed vulture fledglings, the first time that this species has ever been bred in captivity
Nepal captures another 30 vulture chicks for the centre and completes construction of a colony aviary, as well as finalising details of a National Action Plan for vultures
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