Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Three of the six GPS tagged vultures, which were released by the forest officials in Halali dam area of Raisen district some days back, have perished allegedly due to some reason. This has forced the foresters to rescue the remaining three vultures and send them back to the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC).

This is a huge setback to the programme under which six vultures, including two white rumped vultures and four long billed vultures of VCBC were released into the wild. All six vultures were captive-breed vultures of VCBC and it was their first exposure to wild conditions.

Principal chief conservator of forests, Shubranjan Sen told the Free Press that out of six vultures, three had died and a report was awaited to ascertain the exact cause of death.

Sources in the forest department said one vulture died after being attacked by a wild animal. At the same time, it is being assumed that two vultures may have perished allegedly due to starvation or some other compelling reason.

A senior officer of the forest department said that when the location of the three vultures was found to be static on the device, an alert was sounded. A team rushed to the spot to find all three of them dead. Following this, the remaining three vultures were rescued for safety reasons. He added that this showed that captive breed vultures failed to adjust to the free ranging conditions (wild condition).

Notably, this was for the first time in Madhya Pradesh that three captive-breed vultures were released into the wild to find out how they would survive on their own and how they would react on encountering local wild vultures.

An officer in the know of the vulture project said that it seemed the six vultures failed to mix with the local vultures. The three remaining vultures were rescued around April 18-19.

On April 16, six vultures were released into the open range of the Halali dam area. A GPS device was attached to them so that their location could be tracked.

After a few days of their release the forest officials had to rescue them under emergency conditions. The age of the vultures was four to eight years.