Vultures of India: Ecological Developments, Problems, and Prospects

This book covers selected topics about Indian vultures, focussing on their ecology, interactions with people and future, based on related political, social, economic, biological, and technological issues. This is a complex and vast area, complicated by the recent catastrophic decline in the populations of South Asian vulture species on the heels of the introduction of the veterinary drug diclofenac, and the consequent global media and research attention. Related issues have also emerged, such as human induced landscape change, and successes and failures of the ameliorative actions that followed. The book shows that while diclofenac dominated the attention to vulture ecologies and their futures in South Asia, other comparatively neglected issues such as socio-economic policies and technological developments were and are still vital. In the study of vultures and their rapidly changing ecologies, the main clusters of research methods have included laboratory studies and field techniques, the latter both biological and human socio-cultural and economic/technological. The chapters of this book consequently include work on computer software and associated technology, ecological research methods, the behavioral patterns of the studied vulture species and related animals, chemical analyses, related to animal dietary patterns and environmental degradation, avian intrusions into human life spaces etc. The book introduces the ecology of the vulture species residing or wintering in India. This is followed by natural ecological processes of habitat selection, population status and impact of diclofenac which was believed to bring some of the Indian vultures close to local or regional extinction.