Abstract
Vultures play an essential role in environmental health by scavenging meat from carcasses and take place end of the ecosystem as decomposer, without which the ecosystem is incomplete. The vultures are under serious threat in all its distribution ranges. In Southern India, there are five species of vultures successfully thriving unlike Northern Indian population. Still, there are many conservation threats such as livestock grazing, bamboo cutting, non-timber forest product collection, honey collection, pilgrims threat, and deliberate poisoning threatening the securement of the population. This paper discusses the conservation threats and its impacts in the southernmost wild viable vulture population.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is part of the long-term research on vultures in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve which is underway till 2016. Our sincere thanks to the Raptor Research & Conservation Foundation for providing financial assistance to the project. Our wholehearted thanks to the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and Chief Wildlife Warden of Tamil Nadu state for giving us necessary permission to carry out the field work. Our special thanks to Mr. Srinivas R Reddy, IFS., and Mr. I. Anwardeen, IFS., Chief Conservator of Forests and Field Directors, of Mudumalai and Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserves respectively, Mr. S. Ramasubramanian, IFS., District Forest Officer of the Nilgiri North Forest Division for providing permission and all logistic supports to carry out the field work. We would like to thank the Wildlife Trust of India for providing fund for initial stage through Rapid Action Programme. We thank our field assistant Mr. K. Manigandan fand R. Bomman for taking lot of pain in collecting field data in the forests amidst presence of elephants and tigers. We also thank Dr. C. Arivazhagan, Conservation Scientist and Executive Director of Indo-American Wildlife Society, Chennai, for helping in many ways for the successful completion of the manuscript.
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Samson, A., Ramakrishnan, B., Kannan, G., Veeramani, A., Ramasubramanian, S. (2018). Conservation Threats on Critically Endangered Gyps Vultures in the Tamil Nadu Part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, Southern India. In: Sivaperuman, C., Venkataraman, K. (eds) Indian Hotspots. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6983-3_14
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