Vultures for Doongerwadi?

The Doongerwadi advisory committee which met on July 1 was given a report on the two-day symposium on vulture conservation held at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on May 3 and 4, 2012. Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) chairman Dinshaw Mehta and BPP trustee Khojeste Mistree elaborated on plans to construct aviaries at Doongerwadi in Bombay. Around 150 vultures are to be kept in a large aviary that will cover two dakhmas along with a nursery aviary, a quarantine aviary and a hospital aviary. The cost of the project is estimated to be a few crores.
The BPP Review of June 2012 carries a summary of the symposium, written by Scott Perkin, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, in which he mentions that Dr Vibhu Prakash, principal scientist with the Bombay Natural History Society examined the feasibility of returning vultures to Bombay’s Doongerwadi. A smaller breakout session that evening concluded that "the project would be technically viable,” Perkin noted.

File photo of dakhma with vultures (circa 1950s)

How exactly the BPP will overcome the possibility of the vultures being poisoned by Parsi corpses that have consumed diclofenac, is not known. The drug is used in over a thousand different medical preparations. Educating the medical fraternity and Parsis to avoid such medication will be a mammoth undertaking.
In addition to human corpses the vultures will also have to be fed the carcasses of other animals which also may have consumed dic­lofenac in some form.
Dasturs (Dr) Peshotan Mirza and Khurshed Dastoor attended the Sunday morning meet. Dastur (Dr) Firoze Kotwal has resigned from the advisory committee. Community activist Tehmtan Aresh of California also attended the meet but his presence was objected to by BPP trustee Yazdi Desai. Mistree and Aresh had a fall out some years ago and Aresh had supported the candidature of BPP trustee Muncherji Cama against Desai’s wife, Anahita, who lost the election.