Vultures’ Return To Mumbai’s Tower Of Silence Hinges On Solving Diclofenac Challenge: Bombay Parsi Punchayet

The release of captive-bred slender-billed vultures into the wild in Assam on Friday by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has revived hopes among Mumbai’s Parsi-Zoroastrian community about the return of the birds to the Tower of Silence cemetery at Malabar Hill.

As populations of Indian vultures reached near-extinction levels due to the presence of the toxic veterinary drug diclofenac in cattle carcasses, the ancient Zoroastrian funeral custom of Dokhmenashini, under which the dead are placed in dakhmas (Towers of Silence) for natural decomposition, was severely affected. Diclofenac, which affects the kidneys of vultures, is also used as a painkiller in human medicine.

The Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) has been exploring the possibility of bringing vultures back to Doongerwadi, the Parsi-Zoroastrian community’s cemetery complex, in collaboration with the BNHS.

In an interview with The Free Press Journal, BPP chairman Viraf Mehta spoke about the progress of the discussions, plans for an aviary and the challenges involved in protecting the birds from diclofenac.

FPJ: What is the current status of the BPP’s discussions with the BNHS on bringing vultures back to Doongerwadi?

Viraf Mehta: The progress of the talks has been slow. The last meeting we had with them, we met with their representative doctor to get some sort of clarity on, you know, how we would do it. We already have a donor who has stepped up to pay for us to make an aviary at Doongerwadi. We had identified a plot of land where we could have the aviary.

FPJ: What are the obstacles facing the project?

Viraf Mehta: Obviously a lot of questions that goes is, how do you, you know, coax the vultures to a particular dokhma so that dokhma can be enclosed? What happens if the body has diclofenac? Our conversation with the doctor was that, how do you identify a body with and without diclofenac post them being deceased? And then how do we segregate, you know, those bodies in the... in which dokhma? And, how do we keep the vultures away from such bodies, otherwise, you know, they get kidney failure and die.

So, we have not been able to come to a conclusive decision as to the diclofenac part. Identifying a place at Doongerwadi, getting a donor for the aviary, is fine. I mean, there are times when what if there are bodies only with diclofenac coming in, then the trust would have to manually...

FPJ: What could be a possible solution to the diclofenac issue?

Viraf Mehta: So we are basically trying to get some sort of non-intrusive procedure to identify, you know, cadavers with and without... because, post somebody dying, no family really wants any sort of, you know, intrusion or a post-mortem. So we have to find a test that is not too intrusive for us to identify bodies with and without diclofenac. That's kind of where we are stuck on this.

FPJ: Is there unity within the seven-member BPP trust on bringing the vultures back?

Viraf Mehta: We're trying to get some sort of clarity (on the diclofenac issue). I mean, everybody is... the whole board is unanimous in what they want to do. You know, we want to try and bring the vultures back to where it was previously, but obviously these are teething issues that need to be resolved first.