Rare Cambodian vultures recuperate from poisoning

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Veterinarians in Cambodia have saved the lives of two vultures from a nearly extinct species, but failed to rescue seven others who feasted on a poisoned water buffalo.

Pech Bunnat of the Wildlife Conservation Society said Friday that the white-rumped vultures were found in December in the northeastern province of Stung Treng.

They had apparently been stricken after eating the carcass of a water buffalo, which itself died after drinking from a poisoned pond. The pond was poisoned in order to catch the fish in it.

The white-rumped vulture — along with three other vulture species — has been listed since 2000 as "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

With a range stretching from Pakistan to Vietnam, the vulture was once considered one of the most abundant large birds of prey in the world. But the bird experienced precipitous population declines beginning in the 1990s largely due to the use of the anti-inflammatory cattle drug diclofenac, according to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

The drug proved effective in cattle but caused renal failure and mortality in any vulture that fed on the cow corpses that still retained the drug. Populations of white-rumped vultures dropped a staggering 95 percent and have yet to recover.

There are about 282 vultures in Cambodia, most of them in Stung Treng province and officially treated as protected, said Pech Bunnat, who is project manager of the Cambodia Vulture Conservation Project.

He said the Wildlife Conservation Society has built seven feeding stations in the jungle for vultures, which are supplied once or twice a month with slaughtered cows, so that the vulture population can be more closely monitored.