Hyderabad: Excited after spotting a group of vultures in the Amrabad Tiger Reserve (ATR) around 150 kilometers away from Hyderabad, the forest officials will now take up a survey of the surroundings of the place where they were spotted to know more about the group.
A group of forest officials on April 18, spotted four vultures feeding on a carcass near the river Krishna at Maddimadugu range of Amrabad. Rohith Goppidi, DFO said that as per records it is the first time a group of vultures was spotted at the ATR after 90’s. “Individual sightings are there, recently in Kollapur in the southern part of Amrabad, one vulture was spotted while one more was spotted in Mannanur,” he said.
The sight of the spotting of vultures rejuvenated the group of forest officials who were returning after a visit to the interiors of the forest. “We believe the vultures might be nesting somewhere nearby, soon we a group of forest officials will go and try to identify their nesting ground, so as to make more efforts to protect them,” he said. The four vultures belong to the ‘Long Billed Vulture’ family, an endangered species listed on the IUCN Red List 2002.
“Carcasses have to be arranged in the surroundings of their stay so as to enable them to have proper food,” the official said.
He recalled scores of vultures once made the thickly vegetative and hilly Amrabad Tiger Reserve forest area their home. “Over a period of time, their number dwindled due to intake of poisonous food. Farmers usually treat cattle with drugs and whenever the cattle die the medicine is present in the carcass, when vultures feed they intake the chemical or say medicine,” the forest official explained.
The Telangana forest department is taking up programs for breeding of now nearly extinct vultures in a few parts of the State. As part of the project teams of forest officials visit different states and study different species of vultures and their habits. The adjoining Maharashtra state has a high vulture population mainly in the Gadchiroli forest reserve bordering the Adilabad.
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