Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A long-billed vulture that crossed the Madhya Pradesh skies last month, was found dead in Rajasthan on Sunday. The news has come as a jolt to Bhopal's Van Vihar National Park's project related to the rewilding of five endangered vultures.
A team from Van Vihar has left for Rajasthan to ascertain the things related to the death of the big bird.
The dead vulture is long-billed, and it had strayed to Rajasthan more than 10 days ago. The reason behind the vulture's death is yet to be ascertained, and will only be confirmed after the post-mortem report is released.
Van Vihar National Park Director Vijay Kumar confirmed the death of a long-billed vulture in Rajasthan.
Vultures tagged with GPS device before being released
Sources in Van Vihar said that all five released vultures were tagged with GPS device so that their movement could be studied. The long-billed vulture travelled a distance of around 1096 km, and it was on March 22 that the last GPS signal of it was received from the Baran district of Rajasthan. The movement pattern of it was in accordance with the behaviour of long-billed vultures.
As the GPS signal was coming from the same place in a constant manner, Rajasthan’s Baran forest division was alerted. The forest team found the corpse of a vulture in a field situated near the Kelwada area. The vulture corpse was recovered, and its post-mortem is likely to shed light on the reasons behind the death.
CM released endangered vultures on Feb 23
It was on February 23 that Chief Minister Mohan Yadav released five endangered vultures into the wild at Halali Dam. All of them were tagged with GPS devices. The other four vultures are in the Halali jungles and safe.
