Bhubaneswar: The first long-billed vulture chick hatched at the newly-opened vulture conservation breeding centre at Nandankanan Zoological Park, on February 27, died of liver failure on Tuesday.
Sources said the mother vulture was not looking after its baby because of which it fell ill. On noticing this, zoo authorities shifted the chick to the veterinary unit where it was recovering slowly. But on Tuesday morning it was found dead.
This comes as a big blow for the vulture conservation breeding centre inaugurated on December 29 by Forest and Environment Minister Bijayshree Routray on the occasion of the zoo’s 59th foundation day. The chick was hatched from a pair of long-billed vultures received from Gwalior zoo earlier last year.
The Central Zoo Authority had sanctioned Rs 1 crore for the centre, which is a nursery-cum-quarantine aviary for vultures. To conserve the endangered vulture species, an off-exhibit area was earlier constructed at Nandankanan in 2011-12, following a decision taken to establish five vulture conservation breeding centres – at Gujarat’s Junagadh zoo, Bhopal, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi.
Vultures are highly threatened across the country, with their population dipping alarmingly. But the hatchling had rekindled hope of arresting the trend.
According to a report appearing in the New Indian Express a year ago, the population of Slender-billed vulture in India had dipped from 9,426 in 2003 to 5,729 in 2015. That of the Indian vulture had dipped from 30,332 in 2003 to 11,549 in 2015. The only good news was that the population of White-rumped vulture had risen from 629 in 2003 to 1,367 in 2015.
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