Subject: Vulture die-off - India, Pakistan, Nepal (fwd)
Date: Feb 12 07:40:21 2003
From: Devorah A. N. Bennu - nyneve at amnh.org



hello from snowy new york, my tweetie pals,

even though this disease is far from home, i am sending it to you
for two reasons; 1) diann would want to see it and 2) it emphasizes
the tremendous importance of ALL bird taxa for a balanced and
functioning ecosystem.

[note that i have edited out some portions of the following message
for brevity's sake. edited portions are not from the article itself.]

regards,

Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
email:nyneve at amnh.org or nyneve at myUW.net
work page http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/personnel/bennu.htm
personal pages http://research.amnh.org/users/nyneve/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003
Source: New Scientist, 11 Feb 2003 [edited]
<http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993373>


Lab to tackle mystery of vanishing vultures
--------------------------------------------
A new laboratory has opened in India dedicated to identifying the
mystery disease that is exterminating South Asia's vultures. But the
die-off is now so bad that scientists fear they will have to try
breeding at least one species in captivity to save it from
extinction, even before they diagnose the killer infection.

The big griffon vultures that used to be ubiquitous in India started
dying off in the 1990s. In 2000 New Scientist reported that 95
percent of Indian vultures of the genus Gyps had disappeared. Since
then, the remaining population has halved, and the die-off has spread
to Nepal and Pakistan.

Scientists fear the disease could spread to griffon vultures across
Eurasia and Africa. "The ecological impacts could be horrendous,"
says Deborah Pain at the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds.

It is already horrendous in India. Griffon vultures were the main way
in which dead animals were disposed off. Now, says Andrew Cunningham
of the Zoological Society of London, "the superabundance of uneaten
animal carcasses poses a direct health threat and has led to an
explosion in the stray dog population." These dogs carry diseases
including rabies.

The cause of the deadly disease is still unknown, though suspicion
centres on a virus. But it has been impossible to investigate fully.
This is partly because collecting sick or dead birds is extremely
difficult, and partly because Indian law prevents the export of
tissue samples for study in foreign laboratories, although some
samples have been allowed to go to Australia.

New hope has come with the opening of the Vulture Care Centre near
Chandigarh, north of New Delhi, on 7 Feb 2003. It is funded by a
grant from the UK's Darwin Initiative to scientists from the
Zoological Society of London, the The Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds, and the Bombay Natural History Society.

"The main purpose of the centre is to find out what is killing the
vultures and whether anything can be done to make affected birds
recover," says Cunningham. The UK division of Synermed, a diagnostics
company, has donated an automated blood analyser to help track the
disease process, determine which organs it damages, and gauge the
effect of treatments.

"Even doing the basic veterinary work is quite a step forward,"
Cunningham told New Scientist. If the disease is identified and birds
can be tested to ensure they are healthy, the centre will be
converted to a captive breeding facility to help the population
recover.

But Cunningham warns that the Darwin funding runs out in 2004.
Furthermore, one of the 3 species at risk, _Gyps tenuirostris_, which
is unique to the Indian subcontinent, is now down to a few hundred
birds, and faces extinction.

[Byline: Debora MacKenzie]

--
ProMED-mail
<promed at promedmail.org>

[The opening of the Vulture Care Centre seems to be a promising step
in the efforts to control the vulture die-off. Details on the Darwin
Initiative's project have been included in ProMED-mail's posting
"Vulture die-off - India, Pakistan, Nepal (04) 20021018.5590".-
Mod.AS]

[see also:
Rabies and vulture die-off - India 20030207.0329
2002
----
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