Simon Thomsett

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 20 2007 | By: admin

23rd to 24th Nov 2007.

Munir, Pat and I caught the afternoon train in Delhi and arrived late that same day at Sawai Madhopur. Ranthambhore the quintessential ‘Tiger’ park of India was our destination. We were to stay in a lodge on the outskirts of the park. It needs some explanation for those who may have visited other lodges in Africa where they are placed within the park or reserve and are typically situated overlooking a grand natural vista or a waterhole teeming with wildlife. In India this experience, although certainly possible, is not available in the same manner. Instead the lodges are placed outside and are usually fenced off or even surrounded by a high wall excluding wildlife. Although there is a lot to be said in keeping lodges, infrastructure and especially people outside of protected areas (for the good of wildlife); this is not the rationale.

Some camps and lodges do attempt a more natural setting, but apparently they are not so popular among local tourists that make up a significant proportion of the tourists visiting the parks. The government stipulations may encourage the segregation of tourists from wildlife, presumably fearing that a wacky tourist may decide to go jogging and get taken out by an errant animal. Or more sensibly to ensure that the wildlife receives minimum harassment and some peace at least for a portion of the day. Whatever the case it is a pity as one misses out on so much of the wildlife experience. One cannot for example, lie awake at night and listen to the sounds of the “jungle”, the sawing grunt of the leopard, the bark of the deer or the hoot of a Fishing Owl. There is no question of being able to back-pack in solitude away from the maddening crowd alone and “at one” with the wilderness. I can understand this given that tigers are seemingly evolved to munch humans. But in areas where tigers are few the dangers do not compare to that encountered in African reserves where bush walking safaris are allowed. There is no private or community owned land of the same scale in India with large wildlife in which one can wander about camping. There is a move toward it and tourism could greatly benefit if it offered outdoor activities and light bush camps. India could learn as much from African wildlife tourism as we could from their intensive management of their parks.

Given these stipulations the lodges themselves have a particular charm. They focus more on the client’s comfort and cuisine. We were fortunate to be staying in one of the best called Dev Villas. Unfortunately Laila had arrived just ahead of us and had been abandoned at the railway station for hours, which is a miserable experience. She had however made good of the afternoon and had gone on an open bus into the park and had seen two tigers.

The next morning we awoke at 6AM, and bundled up with blankets in the back of an open Maruti/Suzuki Jeep, for a drive around the park in the buffer zones to count vultures. Our routine was to drive to locations where there were Long-billed Vulture nests. Although some nests where within the park most lay outside. Munir had a massive file of photos of the cliffs taken previously with nest sites marked on the enlarged prints. Vultures after a few millennia leave very obvious “white wash” in pot holes, ledges and outcrops of rock. It is a simple matter to check these places and see what the vultures are doing. Pat squinted down the scope and read out the number and whether or not it was occupied by a vulture that was sitting/standing/ nest building/incubating etc. Munir then wrote the data down. Laila assisted in data collection and spotted other vultures or nests and I annoyed everybody by double checking and making asinine comments that the vulture was squatting, not sitting, and facing left not right. I had to be very careful in my jest as these things were taken very seriously. But I have to admit the level of detail left little or no room for error. I was learning, but quickly despaired of the enormity of the task when the time came to making head or tail of so much data. Luckily it isn’t my job.

Munir and Laila checking nests on cliffs.

Our duties included spotting raptors of any kind. We enjoyed the challenge, it kept us on our toes, whether we were driving or counting vultures.
Most of our time at Ranthambhore we spent outside the park. I was especially keen to visit a cliff that I had seen in 2003. This buffer zone area is rich in wildlife and Pat and Munir regularly walk the base of a large section of cliffs counting vultures. I was not very well on that particular day, so when we spotted a dead vulture spread over its nest I offered to stay behind and see if I could get it. They went on and completed the count to finish at a small temple in which they found “the stone hurling guru”. Meanwhile I climbed the cliff using a fairly easy route but got sidetracked half way up. I videoed a vulture on the nest with a chick only a few meters away. But that was not what took my attention. Earlier I had seen leopard tracks lead to this same cliff, and I heard a Nilgai (Blue Bull) snort and trot away towards me when I approached the cliff base. I heard a few barks and cackles from the Langur Monkeys. Corbett wrote that these” little people” of the jungle would keep him informed of the movements of tigers and leopards. They sounded just like Vervet monkeys looking at Leopard. So I squirrelled along the cliff until I could see where a small troop perched just above me were looking. I sat for a good hour, when in broad daylight the leopard walked along the cliff edge slightly higher than I. I got some memorable video as he ambled along with no idea that anyone was around. I scrambled up the last section, and tracked him into a river bed and large cavern, where he reappeared briefly before heading on deeper into more extensive woodland. I treasured this moment more than any tiger sighting.
This time the “team” duplicated the same cliffs, but in reverse. We first visited the temple, set up our scope on the vulture nests only 100m away and begun counting. We had earlier seen a very unusual display by a Red headed Vulture. Two of them cruised high overhead, then one dropped in a side to side roll and stooped in a manner that would have made a Bateleur Eagle proud onto a young Bonelli’s Eagle. Pat really emphasised the need to consider this species in a very different light and we all agreed it is a species begging for research. The Red Headed Vulture is a very odd vulture in many ways more racy and eagle-like than the Lappet-faced or White headed Vultures of Africa. It appears in shape a little more like the White headed Vulture, despite having a face more similar to the Lappet-faced.

For comparison. A Red Headed Vulture (Indian) with a White Headed Vulture (African) pasted in behind.

While on the temple roof a Common Kestrel, presumably from Eurasia busied himself nearby. I suspect he was a resident as there is little evidence to suggest otherwise. Then a Shikra appeared. Beneath our feet Rhesus Macaques wandered about. Then we went to the shrine itself embedded in the cliff wall where each of us took off our shoes and bent down to a small enclave in which water dripped permanently from a fig root onto a smooth rock. Here each of us was blessed and given a tika on our foreheads. Despite being normally reserved I went along with it and appeared with a red dot and felt all the better for it. We all did so and as it is bad luck to wipe it off, it remained for the rest of the day.
I did not get to see the leopard, but I think we all appreciated the walk watching birds, fragile Thomson’s gazelle-like Chinkara gazelles, Nilgai and Langurs. At one point we had stopped to look at some distant cliffs that needed a walk off the road. I looked down and there had just recently passed a large male leopard. A tiny motorbike barely able to support to large men struggled past and stopped. We told them we had seen leopard tracks, and they replied that the leopard had taken a goat in the village last night and had walked in this direction. Everyone seems to know the local leopard and has up-to-date news on what it is up to. Incredulously to me, no-one was in any way upset about it taking livestock (a capital offence back home and a matter likely to fan the flames of dissatisfaction towards wildlife), nor worried about it in any way.

Rufous Treepie.

Treepies are a noisy ubiquitous bird. They were particularly tame at a guard station that was under construction. Later we heard a group clamouring in a bush and went over to see a snake glide out of the tree and into a hole.

Of raptors in general we were struggling to find many. Given that our focus was on cliffs, a habitat that favours large falcons as well as eagles and ridge soaring migrant raptors, the paucity of sightings obliged us to return to our old conclusion: that being that India has either very few raptors, or that there has been a dramatic decline. A cursory glance in the field guide gives all sort of species as being resident or migrant in this region. But except for the Shikra, a few Black shouldered Kites, one Short-toed Snake Eagle and 2 Bonelli’s Eagles our count was dismal by anyone’s standards. We had eight very good eyes on the job. That we saw no large falcon was especially poignant. Perhaps like in Africa raptors can slide into oblivion unnoticed because of the importance others set on the photogenic mega fauna.

25th Nov. 2007.
Spent morning in park checked on the Guddha cliffs and returned looking for tiger. We did stop and watch a Sambar suckle its new born. She at first approached the calf that lay hidden in the grass with a measured step and half raised tail, as though she had seen a predator. We were sure this was the case and moved toward her. The calf was so hungry that they allowed us to come very close while his mother stood still. Finally he realised we were there and moved off and turned around with raised tail.

On the 25th Nov I received some terrible news from my family, that I cannot relate here. I was lucky to be with good friends and I owe them much for their support during the next few weeks when my company could not have been anything other than miserable. I did not return home but stayed on.

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Category: India, vultures | Date: Dec 17 2007 | By: admin

21st Nov 2007.

India trip. Background.
21 Nov to 10th Dec 2007.

To many the word ‘Africa’ has a warm timbre, but I guess because I was born in it, it has nowhere near the same resonance as ‘India’. As a child I remember Riki Tiki Tavi, The Jungle Book and the Man-eaters of Kamoun. These were the standard English literature reading of my generation. Kipling and Corbett’s world portrayed the natural history side of India, perhaps now superseded (from the westerner’s point of view) by a spiritual hankering for personal betterment. I guess the westerner is greatly impressed by the sight of millions living in total poverty in terrible conditions. So was I but for different reasons. We have the same problems at home, and it is very rapidly expanding. One year the plains may be filled with zebra, the next it is covered in shanty dwellings and desperate people. In India the difference is that it has history and the poor seem to accept it with astonishing peace. I suppose they do have spiritual lessons for us all if, as is the inevitable prediction, the whole world will be a shuffling herd of back to back humanity. The spiritual side of things is likely to continue for a while and I have a panicked urgency to see its nature before it goes.

I am an infrequent traveller because I can seldom get away from the captive collection of raptors and animals at home. But now with so few it is possible to do so. My last overseas trip was in 2003, again to India. Then I was a bit of a mess, having just survived being shot at in my living room on two separate occasions. That trip greatly helped, and gave me time out to look back on my home and situation. I vowed then to leave my home and work, but four years on I remain in much the same situation simply because I know of no other way to live. It had to take another personal ’shake-up” to justify this trip. Perhaps after-all I believed that I would have clarity in India that would not be possible to have at home. Although it was not to be a working trip in the usual sense I had clear goals to set. First, to catch up on Indian raptor affairs, second to be with friends. Third, to think and to make plans regarding my birds, home, work and personal life.

In the last few days before leaving I put some of the birds, such as the Lammergeyer in a small shed. The Black Sparrowhawk with the spinal fracture (who is doing so much better……but flies sideways) was put in another walled-off enclosure. I rushed around giving instructions and counter instructions to Mwanzia and Jonathan who patiently took in everything (or erased it as the case may be). During my absence they had to make one trip to a nearby chicken farm to get day old chicks, the staple food for the hawks. This was to be the first time in more than seven years that I entrusted my vehicle to be used for the once a week (or sometime once a fortnight) trip to collect bird food. After staff and volunteers had wrecked a total of 5 vehicles supposedly doing this simple chore in the past, I have reasonable cause to be terrified of this small favour. It is vital of course and has moulded my life for decades. They assured me endlessly that all would be well and that I should go in peace and not fret.

The flight.
I have the perennial misfortune on planes to sit next to the person with the most highly contagious chest complaint of all the passengers. The moment I looked down the aisle my eye caught sight of a spluttering swarthy character and I knew without checking my boarding pass where I was destined to sit. The second I sat down he was immediately discombobulated with limbs disjointed and covered all three seats. My best threatening smile did no good. Despite firmly taking possession of the arm rest and pushing my elbows a fraction into “his” space, he remained unmoved and smiled pleasantly back between heaving coughs which he made no effort to cover. Damn I thought; I’m going to start this trip sick. Consciously I breathed in as little as I could, assuming that this would be a sure way to avoid the germs. But hours into the flight and feeling slightly ill I resumed breathing, only to have him remove his shoes. Man alive! I kid you not, the stench swivelled the heads of those in all rows around us. He knew no known language of course, and was immune to body language and gestures that even a horse would understand.
I resumed the “battle for space” again, filled out my frame and took some command. I even experimented by keeping my elbow on the rest against his, and pushed infinitesimally harder. Although our eyes were firmly fixed on the dirty overhead TV screen placed at an awkward angle to our right the struggle achieved full-fledged arm wrestle standards, until the stewardess arrived and asked if I preferred vegetarian or non-vegetarian.
I landed at Mumbai and then caught a plane to Delhi at dawn. Looking out the window at the diffuse orange glow the sun barely permeated a sulphurous haze stretching from ground level to far above the plane. This smog was with us uninterrupted the entire way. This is one of the most polluted places on earth. In Delhi I was met by Manjeet Sharma our “agent”, and swiftly driven away, through near choking acidic fumes and unbelievably busy streets humming with 3 wheeler taxis, road-side kiosks, ambling cows, defecating dogs and children and massive billboards with pictures of gorgeous green-eyed Indian ladies and handsome fellows with shades and torn shirts. You have to physically flick a switch in your brain and not dwell on a fleeting glimpse of a crippled destitute, a dog licking something suspicious on the road, a sari clad group of women, glitzy city types, the crows and dull cows holding up traffic. Affluence and effluence all in one frame. The driving is special though. The idea is that you floor it as fast as you can to the rear end of the vehicle in front of you, then slam on your brakes, violently jerk the steering wheel and hit the horn. Although it is now against the law to hoot in Delhi the lorries all have painted signs on the back saying “Please hoot the horn”. It is madness.

In 2003 I went to join The Peregrine Fund to meet up with my Kenyan colleague Munir Virani, and Pat Benson. They were busy working on the vultures that had suffered some 95% population declines during the preceding 7 years or so. It is now common knowledge that this decline was due to a pain relieving drug called diclofenec. It is commonly used globally for humans, but the veterinary use allows it to be ingested by vultures. Formerly vultures numbered in their thousands in cities and towns as do the still roaming cattle. Should an ailing cow be encountered the Hindu especially may feel a religious obligation to help. For only a few rupees the cow can get pain relief, but should it soon die it has the ability to kill 100 or more vultures. Why? Birds and reptiles have very efficient kidneys. Diclofenec like many non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs affect kidney function, and can if used incorrectly destroy human and mammal kidneys too. Some 1000 people die of related problems each year. But in birds a tiny amount will stop kidney function. Crystals of urates fill the joints, and body cavities and the bird dies in agony. What little that can be said in defence of the use of this drug is that at least it was done in the hope of lessening animal suffering. It was not deliberate, as is the case of wanton poisoning in much of Africa. But the use of this drug in veterinary care is so widespread and so much part of the cultural approach to animal care that it will result in the extinction of vultures, and many scavenging bird species. It isn’t the first time that an animal welfare concept has back-lashed and caused such havoc for wildlife, I suspect it is the rule.

This catastrophe equals, if exceeds the global effect of persistent agro-chemicals on raptors during the 1960s, but still struggles to be given the same public acknowledgement. Perhaps because the subjects undergoing declines are scavenging birds, pariahs of wildlife, and the unglamourous undertakers few care. Or perhaps people are suffering from “caring fatigue”. We just have too much to consider and worry about these days. But put in their rightful perspective, there can be no other group of animals more valuable to the environment (and rural human life), than those that clean it up. Now that I personally have stepped out of the conservation arena and can allow some unbiased objectivity I can imagine no more important field in raptor conservation than this. It should rank very high up the global agenda for conservation as a whole. We are not talking of species conservation here for nice ethical reasons; we are talking of ecological health of an environment shared with a billion and more humans that are expected to be adversely affected.

The Peregrine Fund was in large part was responsible for discovery of the cause of vulture loss in India and Pakistan and Munir and Pat continued to play a critical role in monitoring the vulture numbers. The RSPB too contributed enormously to the awareness and support of the ban on the veterinary production of diclofenec. Now after the ban the hope is to see a recovery. It occurred to me during a soul searching moment that in a field in which happy endings and positive outcomes are so rare (conservation), to be there and witness a recovery is too good a thing to miss.
In 2003 I was able to tag along a see for myself the vultures and other raptors for myself. My impressions then were mixed. India is huge. It is surprisingly well wooded. For example an area nearly the size of Kenya is protected indigenous forest land, mostly on hills to conserve water supplies. This is quite separate from the protected wildlife parks and sanctuaries. Land use is more communal, orderly and productively managed. For the most part people live in villages or communities and move out each day to till the land and tend to livestock, rather than stake a land claim and pitch a house in the middle of a tiny fenced-off area. There are almost no fences. That’s a good lesson for most of Africa. The country-side and valleys do not reverberate with the sound of incessant tree felling as is the case at home. Most of the food is cooked on efficient stoves using cow pats and grass. People plant trees, indigenous ones mostly……..not soil killing and thirsty eucalyptus. Attitudes to wildlife are one of high tolerance. Langur Monkeys sit side by side with people on busy streets and roof tops, Nilgai antelope graze cereal crops without harassment, mynas, crows and treepies sit within arms reach. Leopards are given names and walk through villages and towns at night. Tigers and elephants aren’t considered a problem until they have killed quite a few people. This level of reverence for wildlife is something we in Kenya simply do not have today. But I have learnt not to be naïve and assume that all is well and that there is a Utopian world in which people live in harmony with wildlife. It is said of Kenya, repeated ad nauseam until one must believe it or fall out of line, despite the facts indicating the very reverse. Wildlife poaching is silent and rampant in India, conducted perhaps even more undetected because of the exoskeleton of seemingly harmonious cultural attitudes. But whether or not poaching exists is largely immaterial to the whole. India like Africa faces no future for wildlife if is continues to have a burgeoning human population. One cannot help but be impressed that despite the numbers of people tigers do still roam their jungles. There is hope, and we can learn from them many important lessons for African conservation.

We ‘did’ the famous reserves not because we enjoyed being sidetracked by leopards and tigers, but because we wanted to see vultures.
There are 3 Gyps species very similar to the 2 species we have in East Africa. They are the Oriental White-backed, Long billed and Slender billed Vultures. The Oriental is perhaps too readily compared to the African White-backed, and the other two are more like our Rüppell’s ‘Griffon’ Vultures. The smaller Oriental White-back has declined the fastest, and is virtually extinct in a vast area of its former range. For no very good reason the Long-billed appears to be still holding on, relatively speaking, at its breeding colonies. It was odd to stand looking up at a cliff face in Bandhavgarh and see more vultures than would be encountered in even the largest colonies in Kenya. That could mean that Kenyan Rüppell’s were not doing so good or that Indian vultures weren’t doing so bad. Or that one had a heck of a lot more work to do before one could offer a reasonable opinion.

The “team”.

Tomorrow I hope to be meeting up with Munir and Pat again. Munir is very organised and thorough and has the energy necessary to drive the process. Munir and I worked together in Kenya on raptor projects for many years. Munir knows India well, he was a keen cricketer and has visited for many years. He has played an important role in the vulture conservation process. I was at first scared of Pat. Someone in India said he looked like a professional wrestler and I knew he has a reputation for zero frivolity in the field. But Pat is actually a soft-hearted man. He has done a tremendous amount of work on the Cape Vultures in South Africa. Munir and Pat together are a formidable team. Laila Bahaa-el-din is joining us too. Laila is already in India working at Kipling Camp in Kanha. She was my last volunteer at home in Kenya in August who despite being discouraged from turning up ignored my warning and still came. Laila helped fly the birds, went on many field trips and helped catch vultures in the Mara. She wishes to do a PhD soon and this may prove a great learning experience although I suspect her calling is more for big cats. I also hope to learn a lot on this trip. We make an odd team to be sure.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 17 2007 | By: admin

21st Nov 2007.

trip. Background.

This entry covers a trip made to

from 21^st Nov to 9^th Dec.

To many the word ‘Africa’ has a warm timbre, but I guess because I was born in it, it has nowhere near the same resonance as ‘

‘. As a child I remember Riki Tiki Tavi, The Jungle Book and the Man-eaters of Kamoun. These were the standard English literature reading of my generation. Kipling and Corbett’s world portrayed the natural history side of

, perhaps now superseded (from the westerner’s point of view) by a spiritual hankering for personal betterment. I guess the westerner is greatly impressed by the sight of millions living in total poverty in terrible conditions. So was I but for different reasons. We have the same problems at home, and it is very rapidly expanding. One year the plains may be filled with zebra, the next it is covered in shanty dwellings and desperate people. In

the difference is that it has history and the poor seem to accept it with astonishing peace. I suppose they do have spiritual lessons for us all if, as is the inevitable prediction, the whole world will be a shuffling herd of back to back humanity. The spiritual side of things is likely to continue for a while and I have a panicked urgency to see its nature before it goes.

Hanuman Langur Monkeys

I am an infrequent traveller because I can seldom get away from the captive collection of raptors and animals at home. But now with so few it is possible to do so. My last overseas trip was in 2003, again to

. Then I was a bit of a mess, having just survived being shot at in my living room on two separate occasions. That trip greatly helped, and gave me time out to look back on my home and situation. I vowed then to leave my home and work, but four years on I remain in much the same situation simply because I know of no other way to live. It had to take another personal ’shake-up” to justify this trip. Perhaps after-all I believed that I would have clarity in

that would not be possible to have at home. Although it was not to be a working trip in the usual sense I had clear goals to set. First, to catch up on Indian raptor affairs, second to be with friends. Third, to think and to make plans regarding my birds, home, work and personal life.

In the last few days before leaving I put some of the birds, such as the Lammergeyer in a small shed. The Black Sparrowhawk with the spinal fracture (who is doing so much better……but flies sideways) was put in another walled-off enclosure. I rushed around giving instructions and counter instructions to Mwanzia and Jonathan who patiently took in everything (or erased it as the case may be). During my absence they had to make one trip to a nearby chicken farm to get day old chicks, the staple food for the hawks. This was to be the first time in more than seven years that I entrusted my vehicle to be used for the once a week (or sometime once a fortnight) trip to collect bird food. After staff and volunteers had wrecked a total of 5 vehicles supposedly doing this simple chore in the past, I have reasonable cause to be terrified of this small favour. It is vital of course and has moulded my life for decades. They assured me endlessly that all would be well and that I should go in peace and not fret.

The flight.

I have the perennial misfortune on planes to sit next to the person with the most highly contagious chest complaint of all the passengers. The moment I looked down the aisle my eye caught sight of a spluttering swarthy character and I knew without checking my boarding pass where I was destined to sit. The second I sat down he was immediately discombobulated with limbs disjointed and covered all three seats. My best threatening smile did no good. Despite firmly taking possession of the arm rest and pushing my elbows a fraction into “his” space, he remained unmoved and smiled pleasantly back between heaving coughs which he made no effort to cover. Damn I thought; I’m going to start this trip sick. Consciously I breathed in as little as I could, assuming that this would be a sure way to avoid the germs. But hours into the flight I resumed breathing, only to have him remove his shoes. Man alive! I kid you not, the stench swivelled the heads of those in all rows around us. He knew no known language of course, and was immune to body language and gestures that even a horse would understand.

I resumed the “battle for space” again, filled out my frame and took some command. I even experimented by keeping my elbow on the rest against his, and pushed infinitesimally harder. Although our eyes were firmly fixed on the dirty overhead TV screen placed at an awkward angle to our right the struggle achieved full fledged arm wrestle standards, until the stewardess arrived and asked if I preferred vegetarian or non-vegetarian.

I landed at Mumbai and then caught a plane to

at dawn. Looking out the window at the diffuse orange glow the sun barely permeated a sulphurous haze stretching from ground level to far above the plane. This smog was with us uninterrupted the entire way. This is one of the most polluted places on earth. In Delhi I was met by Manjeet Sharma our “agent”, and swiftly driven away, through near choking acidic fumes and unbelievably busy streets humming with 3 wheeler taxis, road-side kiosks, ambling cows, defecating dogs and children and massive billboards with pictures of gorgeous green-eyed Indian ladies and handsome fellows with shades and torn shirts. You have to physically flick a switch in your brain and not dwell on a fleeting glimpse of a crippled destitute, a dog licking something suspicious on the road, a sari clad group of women, glitzy city types, the crows and dull cows holding up traffic. Affluence and effluence all in one frame. The driving is special though. The idea is that you floor it as fast as you can to the rear end of the vehicle in front of you, then slam on your brakes, violently jerk the steering wheel and hit the horn. Although it is now against the law to hoot in

the lorries all have painted signs on the back saying “Please hoot the horn”. It is madness.

In 2003 I went to join The Peregrine Fund to meet up with my Kenyan colleague Munir Virani, and Pat Benson. They were busy working on the vultures that had suffered some 95% population declines during the preceding 7 years or so. It is now common knowledge that this decline was due to a pain relieving drug called diclofenec. It is commonly used globally for humans, but the veterinary use allows it to be ingested by vultures. Formerly vultures numbered in their thousands in cities and towns as do the still roaming cattle. Should an ailing cow be encountered the Hindu especially may feel a religious obligation to help. For only a few rupees the cow can get pain relief, but should it soon die it has the ability to kill 100 or more vultures. Why? Birds and reptiles have very efficient kidneys. Diclofenec like many non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs affect kidney function, and can if used incorrectly destroy human and mammal kidneys too. Some 1000 people die of related problems each year. But in birds a tiny amount will stop kidney function.

of urates fill the joints, and body cavities and the bird dies in agony. What little that can be said in defence of the use of this drug is that at least it was done in the hope of lessening animal suffering. It was not deliberate, as is the case of wanton poisoning in much of

. But the use of this drug in veterinary care is so widespread and so much part of the cultural approach to animal care that it will result in the extinction of vultures, and many scavenging bird species. It isn’t the first time that an animal welfare concept has back-lashed and caused such havoc for wildlife, I suspect it is the rule.

This catastrophe equals, if exceeds the global effect of persistent agro-chemicals on raptors during the 1960s, but still struggles to be given the same public acknowledgement. Perhaps because the subjects undergoing declines are scavenging birds, pariahs of wildlife, and the unglamourous undertakers few care. Or perhaps people are suffering from “caring fatigue”. We just have too much to consider and worry about these days. But put in their rightful perspective, there can be no other group of animals more valuable to the environment (and rural human life), than those that clean it up. Now that I personally have stepped out of the conservation arena and can allow some unbiased objectivity I can imagine no more important field in raptor conservation than this. It should rank very high up the global agenda for conservation as a whole. We are not talking of species conservation here for nice ethical reasons; we are talking of ecological health of an environment shared with a billion and more humans that are expected to be adversely affected.

The Peregrine Fund was in large part was responsible for discovery of the cause of vulture loss in

India
and

and Munir and Pat continued to play a critical role in monitoring the vulture numbers. The RSPB too contributed enormously to the awareness and support of the ban on the veterinary production of diclofenec. Now after the ban the hope is to see a recovery. It occurred to me during a soul searching moment that in a field in which happy endings and positive outcomes are so rare (conservation), to be there and witness a recovery is too good a thing to miss.

In 2003 I was able to tag along a see for myself the vultures and other raptors for myself. My impressions then were mixed.

is huge. It is surprisingly well wooded. For example an area nearly the size of

is protected indigenous forest land, mostly on hills to conserve water supplies. This is quite separate from the protected wildlife parks and sanctuaries. Land use is more communal, orderly and productively managed. For the most part people live in villages or communities and move out each day to till the land and tend to livestock, rather than stake a land claim and pitch a house in the middle of a tiny fenced-off area. There are almost no fences. That’s a good lesson for most of

. The country-side and valleys do not reverberate with the sound of incessant tree felling as is the case at home. Most of the food is cooked on efficient stoves using cow pats and grass. People plant trees, indigenous ones mostly……..not soil killing and thirsty eucalyptus. Attitudes to wildlife are one of high tolerance. Langur Monkeys sit side by side with people on busy streets and roof tops, Nilgai antelope graze cereal crops without harassment, mynas, crows and treepies sit within arms reach. Leopards are given names and walk through villages and towns at night. Tigers and elephants aren’t considered a problem until they have killed quite a few people. This level of reverence for wildlife is something we in

simply do not have today. But I have learnt not to be naïve and assume that all is well and that there is a Utopian world in which people live in harmony with wildlife. It is said of

, repeated ad nauseam until one must believe it or fall out of line, despite the facts indicating the very reverse. Wildlife poaching is silent and rampant in

, conducted perhaps even more undetected because of the exoskeleton of seemingly harmonious cultural attitudes. But whether or not poaching exists is largely immaterial to the whole.
India
like

faces no future for wildlife if is continues to have a burgeoning human population. One cannot help but be impressed that despite the numbers of people tigers do still roam their jungles. There is hope, and we can learn from them many important lessons for African conservation.

We ‘did’ the famous reserves not because we enjoyed being sidetracked by leopards and tigers, but because we wanted to see vultures.

There are 3 Gyps species very similar to the 2 species we have in

. They are the Oriental White-backed, Long billed and Slender billed Vultures. The Oriental is perhaps too readily compared to the African White-backed, and the other two are more like our Rüppell’s ‘Griffon’ Vultures. The smaller Oriental White-back has declined the fastest, and is virtually extinct in a vast area of its former range. For no very good reason the Long-billed appears to be still holding on, relatively speaking, at its breeding colonies. It was odd to stand looking up at a cliff face in Bandhavgarh and see more vultures than would be encountered in even the largest colonies in

. That could mean that Kenyan Rüppell’s were not doing so good or that Indian vultures weren’t doing so bad. Or that one had a heck of a lot more work to do before one could offer a reasonable opinion.

Indian Long-billed Vulture.

Tomorrow I hope to be meeting up with Munir and Pat again. Munir is very organised and thorough and has the energy necessary to drive the process. I was at first scared of Pat. He looks like a professional wrestler and has no time for frivolity in the field. But Pat is actually a soft-hearted man. He has done a tremendous amount of work on the

Vultures
in

. Laila Bahaa-el-din is joining us too. Laila is already in

working at Kipling Camp in Kanha. She was my last volunteer at home in August who despite being discouraged from turning up still came and helped fly the birds and catch vultures in the Mara. She wishes to do a PhD soon and this may prove a great learning experience although I suspect her calling is more for big cats. I also hope to learn a lot on this trip. We make an odd team to be sure.

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