Setting up tables for the ‘inauspicious’ vultures

There are fine-dining restaurants, and quick service restauants and online restaurants - but a restaurant for vultures? That is what 70-year-old Shankar Shinde chooses to call the half acre patch of fenced ground a short walk from his village Khoripada in Harsul, Nashik. This is where, through Shinde’s efforts, animal carcasses from eight nearby villages are brought so vultures from nearby Trimbakeswar can come and feed.

The bhojanalaya, which has been built on forest department land, was built in 2011, but has come into operation only since 2015, says Shinde, who is also president of his village’s Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC), that collaborates with the forest department to monitor the welfare of this forested area. “We had to overcome opposition from the villagers, because the vulture is considered ‘inauspicious’. So I explained to them vultures were the descendents of Jatayu in the Ramayana.”

That’s not all. “We also have to make sure that the animals have not been given diclofenac,” says Shinde, referring to the veterinary drug which has been the single-biggest cause for the decline in India’s vulture population. “So we insist on a vet’s certificate before we allow it to be brought to our bhojanalaya.”

Shinde’s efforts are one of several successful community-led conservation efforts by the Maharashtra Forest Division’s Nashik circle in the area, and bagged the district level first prize under Sant Tukaram Vangram Yojana in 2012-13 and the consolation prize in 2013-14. Shinde, who went on stage to receive the award, proudly displays a photograph of him with superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

The biggest indicator of these efforts have been on the vultures in the area. “This area is home to two of the nine vulture species found in the country - the White-rumped [scientific name: Gyps benghalensis] and the Long-billed [Gyps indicus],” says Shinde who, despite having studied only upto class III, fluently explains the difference between the two. According to a recent report of the Nature Conservation Society of Nashik (NSCN), the number of vultures in the area has gone up by 100 per cent in the area in the past five years.

The founder of NSCN, Bishwarup Raha, another honorary wildlife warden of Nashik district, has also been working to spread awareness about conservation, especially among school children - organising drawing competitions and trips to nesting sites on the cliffs above Harsul. Raha, however, is a little cautious: “The number of Long-billed vultures has gone up, I’d say, by 200 per cent. But these build their nests in the cliffs. There has not been a similar change in the population of White-rumped Vultures, which were once very common and are now critically endangered. This is partly because they build their nests on trees and deforestation continues unchecked in these forests.” All the more reason for vultures to thank Shinde for their restaurant.