At dawn, a carcass is dragged into a fenced clearing near Assam’s Kulsi landscape.

By midday, dark shapes begin gathering overhead.

Soon, critically endangered vultures descend in cautious bursts onto the remains of a dead cow certified free of toxic veterinary drugs.

The site is what wildlife experts call a “vulture restaurant”. The name may sound unusual, but the crisis it addresses is anything but.

A vulture restaurant is a managed feeding station designed to give vultures access to safe food in areas where natural food sources have become scarce.

Across India, such feeding stations and vulture-safe zones are emerging as an important conservation measure. The birds face several threats, including starvation, habitat loss, poisoning, electrocution, unsafe veterinary drugs and the loss of nesting sites.

Assam is now preparing to launch its first vulture restaurant in Kulsi, under the guidance of the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC), Rani. 

Once among the most abundant birds in the Indian subcontinent, vultures have suffered one of the sharpest population declines recorded among birds. India’s vulture population, estimated at nearly four crore in the 1980s, fell by more than 97 to 99 percent within a few decades.

The White-rumped Vulture suffered an especially devastating decline of nearly 99.9 percent, largely linked to the widespread veterinary use of diclofenac. The painkiller is toxic to vultures when they feed on the carcasses of livestock treated with it.

India banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006. But the recovery of vulture populations has been slow and uneven.

The Better India spoke to Dr Sachin P Ranade, Assistant Director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and senior centre manager of VCBC, Rani, to understand why vultures are still struggling and why an unusual-sounding “vulture restaurant” could play a role in their recovery.

What is diclofenac and why is it harmful to vultures?

When livestock treated with diclofenac died, traces of the drug remained in their tissues.

Vultures feeding on these carcasses could suffer acute kidney failure. Post-mortem examinations found visceral gout, damaged organs and deposits of uric acid coating internal tissues.

India banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006 after sustained efforts by scientists and conservation groups. The government later restricted the use of large multi-dose vials of human diclofenac after they were found to be diverted for veterinary use.

But the damage had already been severe.

“The diclofenac crisis devastated vultures, but the problem today is much larger than a single drug,” says Dr Sachin.

For more than 25........

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