"The Magnificent Vulture - End of the Road?”
Toxics Link and India International Centre cordially invites you to a film screening and panel discussion on
The Magnificent Vulture – End of the Road?
Vultures have existed for eons – as part of our mythology, amongst Egyptian Pharos and Greek legends. Yet in a short span of 20 years, they are close to extinction in South Asia and beyond. How did this happen, and is there any hope of a recovery?
Classified as critically-endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the population of vultures has declined by an alarming rate of over 99 per cent during the last two decades.
Dr. Vibu Prakash is one of our foremost scientists working on vulture conservation. Currently as a Principal Scientist, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), he is incharge of the Vulture conservation breeding program in India and is based at Pinjore, Haryana.
Dr. Prakash has worked on bird migration till 1984 and has been working on raptors since then. He studied the raptor community at Keoladeo National Park, Bhartpur, and Rajasthan for four years (1984-1988) for his doctoral thesis. He studied the ecology of little known lesser spotted Eagle (now known as Indian Spotted Eagle-Aquila hastate), for the first time.
Dr. Prakash identified and documented the crash in Gyps vulture population and was a part of the team which established that the drug diclofenac was also responsible for the alarming decline in Gyps vulture populations in India. Later he was part of the team that prepared the South Asian Vulture Recovery Plan which included establishing and running three vulture conservation breeding programmes in the country. He is also a member of Central Zoo Authority of India and a Fellow Zoological Society of London, U.K.
The lecture will be preceded by the screening of the film “Vanishing Vultures” directed by Mike Pandey; Duration: 16 Minutes.
Speaker:
Dr. Vibhu Prakash
Principal Scientist, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS)
Moderated by Ravi Agarwal, (Director, Toxics Link)
Venue: Conference Room I, India International Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
Date : Wednesday, 20 March, 2013 Time: 6:30 pm
RSVP : Rambha Tripathy, rambha@toxicslink.org
Ph: +91-11- 24320711, 24328006
H-2, Jungpura Extension, New Delhi-110014
www.toxicslink.org