Climate change may have killed captive Vulture babies

Unusual weather and temperature changes are said to have played a role in the death of the wprld’s first vulture chicks born in captivity at Pinjore near Chandigarh on Janaury 1 and 5.Though the rare Oriental White-backed Vulture parents tried hard, the pair did not survive a month.”The parents fed them properly and the postmortem did not indicate infections told by experts. Experts says, “The climate and temperature fluctuations played a possible role in the deaths.”

The chicks died on January 12th and 30th of this year.Conservationists are increasingly worrying that climate change is confusing wildlife, sometimes fatally.Few weeks ago, 17 rare loons froze to death in New Hamphshire, UK, and conservationists blamed the warm weather for confusing the threatened bird species that normally flies to the ocean for winter.

In Pinjore, where closed circuit television cameras monitor the vultures had noticed that January’s erratic temperature fluctuations seemed to affect the parents brooding habits to keep the chicks warm.

“Vulture nestlings have only one downy feather coat and depend on their parents brooding,” says experts. But some January mornings here were either freezing or warm at 15 degrees Celsius. Sometimes the maximum would touch 30 degrees.”

Even in the wild, vulture nestlings have a low survival rate, so this captive breeding was hailed as a milestone since India has lost over 97 percent vultures since the nineties. But the loss is not yet a disaster. At the conservation centre, nine vulture pairs are now living in and house hunting for locations to set up nests

Source: Hindustan Times
Compiled By: Saurav Chakraborty