We need vultures:Daily Star

In our childhood during early 1950s our pastime included chasing vultures eating carcasses. Between our para -- Ballia Bora Boro and the Zamindar Bari of Ballia under Dhamrai, Dhaka -- there was a football pitch. A narrow canal connected the Bangshi river that originated in the then Dhaleshwari near Kedarpur under Tangail and the Dhaleshwari river just below Savar to the Sraddher Beel lying betwee
n several villages under the Ballia union. Boats could use the canal from June to October but by winter the canal would become dry. So, during the floods or rainy season, any cattle dying in the village would simply be left at this canal. Within hours, pariah dogs, jungle crows, mynas would join the foray of having a share of the carcass. Soon, jackals and vultures would also battle for a share of the free food. The news of vultures swooping on the carcass would spread through the village like wildfire. We the youngsters of under 16 years of age would immediately gather, with sticks and pulled-down fresh branches of trees, and rush towards the carcass eating animals en masse. We attempted this many a time in our childhood but I don't recall we had ever hit a vulture although we were just a few centimetres away from them. I had seen king vultures approaching the carcass, first eating eyes and anal openings, which have soft tissues, thereby opening up the carcass. Soon vultures, dogs and jackals would fight for their share. When dogs used to be busy chasing away jackals, the vultures would eat up most of the carcass. Jackals were the last to get their share and that was usually after the sun had tilted much towards the horizon in the west. I don't think I have seen a King Vulture after 1957, when I moved to Manikganj sub-divisional town to complete my SSC and HSC. However, Bengal Vultures were aplenty in areas under Dhamrai, Savar, Manikganj proper, Shingair, Ghior, Shivalaya and Saturia under Manikganj, Nagpur and Mirzapur police stations under Tangail. These are the places my relatives were spread over. I used to see vultures in all these areas at least until the Liberation War in 1971. During early 1980s, before the area between Banani and Shahjalal International Airport had been developed, vultures used to roost on a few Palmyra palm trees that used to dot the side now taken over by the cantonment expansion and housing projects like Nikunja. If anybody flies over the country with a low flying twin-seater or a helicopter, the tallest tree-like structures that he/she would encounter are mobile telephone towers, power pylons and high-rise buildings with telephone towers. I understand that now there is no such wildly-growing roadside trees like Palmyra palm, Debdaru, Shimul, Satim, Bot, Pakur-Ashwaththa, Pitali, Barun, Hijol, Gab and Koroch, which anybody would use even as firewood. Such things were in plentiful supplies all over the country before. Soon after the independence, road constructions, brick kilns and tobacco curing by a multinational company, which enticed farmers to use trees for curing tobacco leaves, led to the dissemination of all abundantly growing, virtually ownerless tall and soft wood trees. Because of the huge demand for timber and firewood, all tall and more than 20-year-old trees had been cut from private properties by their rightful owners. To join the competition of cutting down natural trees, the forest department started removing naturally-growing trees and replacing those with commercially viable indigenous as well as exotic tall trees in military fashion that excluded all tall and soft-wood trees from the government forestry areas. Advertisement Vultures for their survival need tall and soft branched trees for two obvious reasons that a very few countrymen know. First, for its heavy body to land on, the branches or leaves must be elastic so that when it drops down, it swings and allows the vulture to balance on such a high place with ease. Secondly, for nest-building they need trees with pliable branches for obvious reason of accommodating the huge pile of nesting materials and then breaking smaller branches and twigs with ease to build the nest. When all tall trees disappeared from the private properties and forests, as a stopgap arrangement, vultures started using Taal and Narikel (Palmyra and Coconut Palm trees) leaves for landing. But the vultures did not find tall trees to build nests on. In addition, people started treating cattle with painkillers like diclofenac, which impacted the vultures heavily when they ate the carcasses, as has been found by scientists in India and Pakistan where more than 80 percent vultures died from this. Moreover, our countrymen have become smarter. They are using the dying cattle for human consumption. Some even reported to have used meat from dead cows for human consumption. Also they dispose of the cattle carcasses in a more hygienic way now than they used to 20-30 years ago. So, vultures are deprived of whole carcasses. Ultimately, most vultures disappeared from the country. My educated guess is that in the whole country we possibly have less than 200 vultures including 50 or so that pass over the country as migrants, especially the Kalo Shakun Black or Cinereous Vulture and Himalayan/Eurasian Griffon. In addition to natural and man-made causes for the vulture disappearance, our culture is also not very kind to most animals. Socially, an animal Haram or forbidden by religion can be killed. Some animals are halal, meaning they are allowed to be eaten. In this case too we kill animals. Thus, in both counts animals are killed. Sometimes our poets, litterateurs, etc, unknowingly or due to lack of knowledge regarding our nature blame poor wild animals. They have introduced Bangla words and phrases that demonise vultures, like shakuner haiyat (having a very long life), shakuni (a bad women or a witch). So, socially we have been taught to hate vultures.  In nature or in the traditional ecosystems, vultures play a unique role of a janitor or a cleaner. When cattle die in a village or countryside, or a wild deer, a gaur in forests, we as human beings do not dispose of such carcasses hygienically. We just dump them a little away from our home or village without realising the harm such dead bodies may cause to us. WE NEED VULTURES, THEY DON'T NEED US The Parsis in Bombay, now Mumbai, had a huge tower to dispose of human bodies so that vultures could feed on those. With the loss of more than 80 percent of India's vultures, Parsis are in trouble with regards to disposing of their dead compatriots. On a three-day tour of Tanguar haor in 2012, I came across four dead cattle being carried to various parts of rivers from Taherpur township to the middle of the haor and there were no vultures to eat those. The area was filled with the stench of rotting carcasses. No vultures in sight that meant that nature's janitors were not in action. So we need vultures to clean our environment. A few mini colonies of vultures that have been spotted by the Bangladesh IUCN Chapter's vulture research team should be protected at all costs. In this the forest department must play these key roles. 1) Save all tall non-timber forest trees and other tall trees used by vultures for either roosting or nesting.  2) Start a vulture café near vulture breeding colonies by slaughtering diclofenac free cattle, cutting those into large chunks and spreading in designated “Vulture Canteen” -- a protected open field where vultures would be allowed to eat under human protection free of pariah dogs, jackals and crows. 3) Start a vulture breeding and reintroduction programme in collaboration with Bombay Natural History Society, which is managing such canteens and breeding centres in several parts of India and releasing adult captive-bred vultures back to nature. 4) Launch an awareness programme so that people become tolerant to vultures in their neighbourhoods. 5) All private properties housing natural populations of vultures are to be compensated for the loss or the damage to the trees and properties caused by vultures, such as nest building, damaging tree leaves with droppings or by landing on them. This can be done with a special protocol to be developed under Bangladesh Wildlife Protection/Preservation Act.