Migration of Panna Tiger Reserve's vultures to faraway places like Southeast Asia, China has surprised scientists

The migration journey of vultures from a premier tiger-land, in northern Madhya Pradesh, to the faraway countries presents a hard to believe story. The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), an autonomous institute under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, is conducting an interesting research on the migration journey of vultures from Panna Tiger Reserve to South East Asia and central China.

The Panna Tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh is known for its tiger population. The general tendency among the visitors is to obtain more and more information about tigers and see the king of the jungle in the wild. Very few guests show interest in scavenger birds of the protected area. The Panna Tiger Reserve boasts of having 722 vultures (2021 data) and it serves as habitat to the biggest population of vultures in Madhya Pradesh.

The issue of declining population of vultures, due to widespread use of drugs such as diclofenac, became grave in the 90s. Many studies were conducted on the impact of drugs on the life of vultures. The situation now appears to be under some control after the Government of India imposed a ban on diclofenac for veterinary use in 2008.

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The ongoing study of the WII aims to document the migration routes, breeding and roosting sites of the vultures. For this GPS trackers have been fixed on birds.

WII’s senior scientist Ramesh Krishnamurthy, says, “We fixed up GPS Tags with GSM network on vultures and had this idea that they migrate to nearby areas. But, the result of the trackers has surprised us and the vultures fly to faraway places for summer migration and breeding.”

Over two dozen vultures were captured at Panna Tiger Reserve in 2022. Even for catching the vultures a special operation was conducted by attracting them through bait. Under the project, thirteen Indian vultures, two red headed vultures, eight Himalayan griffons and two Eurasian Griffons were captured and their biological tests were conducted by an experienced team of veterinary doctors. Trackers were fixed and the birds were released.

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The data obtained through GPS tracking devices made the wildlife scientist jump with joy. The data related to the movement of Himalayan and Eurasian Griffons were surprising. The migration pathways and the major stop-over sites of these vultures were spread across 10 countries. However, many vulture species were found to be resident and were migrating to nearby locations to Panna reserve in the summer.

The migration journey of tagged Eurasian and Himalayan Griffons remains a major find of the research. One tagged Eurasian Griffon took over 2,700 km of journey and passed through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to finally reach Kyrgyzstan. A Himalayan Griffon was moving from Panna Tiger Reserve to central China for summer migration. Another tagged Eurasian Griffon was using a different route, via Nepal, to reach Central China. The long journey of the vultures was never recorded and this is the first ever such study in India.

This is a new finding and the outcome of the research was shared recently at the 34th annual research seminar of the WII in Dehradun. Project fellow Dibyendu Biswas shared a paper titled “Ranging pattern through GPS-tracking of resident and migratory vultures of Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh” in the seminar.

One of the Himalayan Griffons tagged in February 2022 started its migration from Tien Shan mountain region and has recently reached Rajaji Tiger Reserve in Uttarakhand. The voyage of the tagged vultures getting documented will help wildlife scientists in making better conservation plans.

Krishnamurthy says, “The information is now a part of Integrated Landscape Management of Greater Panna Landscape, and we hope to continue with applied research in the landscape and for long-term conservation of vultures in India.”

The long migration journey of the vultures from Panna Tiger Reserve demands responsible approach from different countries. A joint effort should be made for effective conservation of this bird species.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._

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