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  • From: Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>
  • To: Permaculture ibiblio <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Vulture dieoff in India
  • Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 23:57:07 -0500

Now, how do we get meat from India to the vultures in the White House (I don't mean to insult vultures, for whom I have deep respect).



KATHMANDU, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Conservationists urged South Asian governments on Thursday to ban the use of a common painkiller for the treatment of farm animals, saying it threatens the survival of vultures in the region. A study by the Peregrine Fund, based in the United States, found vultures that ate the carcasses of animals treated with the drug were dying. The painkiller is also used in humans.

"The most effective step to save vultures is to ban the veterinary use of diclofenac," Richard Watson, programme director of the Peregrine Fund, told reporters at the start of a two-day meeting on vultures. "Awareness campaigns must be launched to encourage people to stop using diclofenac for animals," he said. Populations of the Oriental white-backed vulture, the long-billed vulture and the slender-billed vulture have fallen drastically during the decade that the drug has been used to treat animals in India, Pakistan and Nepal, researchers say. Experts say the three species of vultures found in the region are critically endangered in South Asia, with India losing about 95 percent of its vulture population and Pakistan 92 percent.

Vultures that feed on the carcasses of livestock given diclofenac build up levels of the drug high enough to trigger kidney failure, Watson said in findings reported in the British science journal Nature. The dramatic drop in population has created enormous problems for the ecosystem because vultures play a key role in keeping cities clean, by eating animal carcasses. It has also created a crisis for India's tiny Parsi community, which leaves its dead in stone towers to be eaten by vultures because its religion forbids burial and cremation.

--
Keith Johnson
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 1209
Black Mountain, NC 28711
(828)669-6336

also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
Culture's Edge at Earthaven Ecovillage
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
http://www.earthaven.org
http://www.bioregionalcongress.org





  • [permaculture] Vulture dieoff in India, Keith Johnson, 02/10/2004

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