8 vultures bred in captivity in Hry to be released into wild

The Haryana Forest Department is planning to release eight vultures, which were bred in captivity, into the wild after attaching tracking devices to them.
This will be the first-ever release of White-backed, Long-billed and Slender-billed vultures into the wild, a spokesman of the Haryana Forest Department said here today.
With a view of tracking the endangered vultures after their release into the wild, the Centre had granted permission for attaching satellite transmitters - Platform Transmitter Terminals (PTTs) to them.
Vultures, which act as natural scavengers, have immense ecological, economic, social and religious importance.
However, as their population started declining rapidly in the 1990s, Haryana initiated a programme for their conservation and reintroduction into the wild.

On June 3, last year, Union Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar, and Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, initiated reintroduction of vultures into the wild from the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore.

The spokesman said only wing-tags could be put on the birds for identification and one bird could be followed for 45 days.
"By then, the bird had successfully started locating food and water and was flying very high into the clouds. This was for the first time that successful reintroduction of vultures into the wild was carried out," he said.
"However, it was not possible to follow the birds further because no tracking device was put on them. Therefore, the Forest Department initiated the process of obtaining permission from the Centre's Department of Telecommunications in November, 2015 to put Platform Transmitter Terminals (PTTs) on vultures to help locate them through satellite once they are released into wild," the spokesman said.

Haryana Forest Minister Rao Narbir Singh, had written a demi-official letter to the Union Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change requesting him to grant permission to the Forest Department to deploy PTTs, he said.
The department has deposited the required fee with the Union Ministry of Telecommunication in February this year and the frequencies on which the satellites would operate would soon be issued, he said.
The Forest Department, in collaboration with Bombay Natural History Society, had established the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Pinjore in 2001, to save the three critically-endangered resident species of vultures from possible extinction.

This is the first-of-its-kind centre in Asia and houses 226 birds of the three species of vultures.