Type: Species

Why in the News

Electrocution on India’s expanding power infrastructure is emerging as a threat to vultures capable of overtaking the chemical poisoning that caused their collapse.

How far did the chemical crash take India’s vultures?

1. The loss was among the world’s worst recorded: Numbers fell by 99.5 per cent by 2007 from a high of around four crore in the 1980s.
2. Three species were nearly wiped out: The white-rumped, Indian and slender-billed vultures were the worst affected.
3. The cause was a veterinary painkiller: Diclofenac administered to cattle destroyed the kidneys of vultures that fed on the carcasses.
4. The regulatory response came in stages: The government banned diclofenac first, then added bans in 2023 on aceclofenac and ketoprofen among other NSAIDs.
5. The population has not returned: One official survey reported in 2025 that vultures were nesting at only 50 per cent of their historic nesting sites.

What did the collapse cost beyond the birds?

1. Carcasses stayed exposed for longer: The loss of scavengers left livestock carcasses in the open, which supported feral dog populations.
2. Rabies outbreaks followed: The growth in feral dog numbers led to outbreaks of rabies.
3. Human mortality rose 4 per cent: A 2024 study in the American Economic Review estimated that increase as a consequence of the vulture decline.
4. The damages were valued at 69.4 billion dollars a year: The same study put the associated cost to India at that figure.

Why does power infrastructure kill vultures specifically?

1. A wingspan can bridge two conductors: A large individual can contact two conductors at once, which is what completes the circuit through the bird.
2. The birds seek elevated perches: Vultures habitually perch on elevated structures and are drawn to open landscapes, which is what a transmission corridor provides.
3. Predictable food concentrates them: Vultures congregate where food availability is predictable, and dumping of food waste around electrical installations creates exactly that draw.
4. Medium-voltage lines are also lethal: An assessment prepared for the State Climate Resilient Power System Development Project recorded an Egyptian vulture and steppe eagles electrocuted on medium-voltage rather than high-voltage lines.

Why is the evidence on electrocution weaker than the threat?

1. The deaths are removed before they are recorded: Avian electrocution is likely under-documented in India, since a dead bird can be taken by people or eaten by scavengers.
2. The comparison with drugs understates the risk: Electrocution has not become as deadly as NSAIDs were, and the population it now acts on is a fraction of the one the drugs acted on.
3. A local population can be lost to it alone: Research has noted that persistent mortality from electrocution by itself could render a local population extinct.
4. Waiting for the data repeats the first failure: The fragility of the surviving population and the proliferation of unsafe power infrastructure are together the case for acting before the mortality record matures.

Which interventions has the evidence actually tested?

1. Moving the food source worked: Relocating a livestock carcass dump 2.4 km away from high-tension power infrastructure near Dehradun in Uttarakhand may have saved these scavengers from electrocution, per a recent study in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.
2. Separation is the cheapest measure available: Keeping vulture feeding sites away from power infrastructure is a siting decision rather than a capital works programme.
3. Insulating conductors removes the contact risk: Covering energised components stops a bird bridging them.
4. Increasing clearances answers the wingspan: Widening the gap between energised and grounded components has to be sized against vulture wingspans rather than against smaller birds.
5. Safe perches redirect the birds: Installing perches that carry no current gives raptors an alternative to the energised structure.

Challenges to vulture conservation in India

1. Human formulations substitute for the banned veterinary drug: Multi-dose human vials of diclofenac remain on sale and are diverted to cattle, so the ban is defeated at the pharmacy counter. Eg. India capped the human diclofenac vial at 3 ml in 2015 because larger vials were being used on livestock.
   The Fix: Make sale of injectable diclofenac without a veterinary prescription an enforceable offence policed by drug inspectors rather than by forest staff.
2. New painkillers enter the market faster than they are tested: A molecule is approved for cattle without a vulture safety trial, so each ban is followed by the next drug. Eg. Nimesulide has been shown to be toxic to Gyps vultures and remains in veterinary use.
   The Fix: Require safety testing on Gyps vultures as a condition of veterinary marketing approval for any NSAID, with meloxicam as the reference safe alternative.
3. Captive breeding cannot outpace adult mortality: Vultures lay a single egg a year and mature slowly, so releases add birds far more slowly than a landscape threat removes them. Eg. The Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre at Pinjore has released birds only in small annual batches.
   The Fix: Certify the release landscape as safe before any release, with drug residue sampling and line insulation audited as the precondition.
4. The food base has been engineered away: Rendering and burial of livestock carcasses removes the open food supply that once sustained large scavenger populations. Eg. Vulture restaurants in Maharashtra and Punjab exist because the traditional open carcass dump has disappeared from many districts.
   The Fix: Fund supplementary feeding sites from State animal husbandry budgets and site them by rule away from transmission corridors.
5. No agency is answerable for bird deaths on power lines: Transmission and distribution utilities carry no reporting duty for wildlife mortality, so the threat has no dataset behind it. Eg. Bird deaths on power lines in the Thar landscape became visible only after Great Indian Bustard litigation forced surveys.
   The Fix: Make wildlife mortality reporting a licence condition for transmission and distribution licensees, with the returns published by the State electricity regulator.
6. Bird safe design is not written into line standards: Construction standards specify electrical clearances, not clearances sized for large raptors. Eg. Directions on undergrounding power lines in Great Indian Bustard habitat were later narrowed on feasibility and cost grounds.
   The Fix: Write raptor safe pole and cross-arm geometry into the national electricity standards for new lines in identified vulture landscapes.

Conclusion

The chemical crash was answerable on paper, because a single molecule could be identified and banned. Electrocution offers no such lever, since the killing agent is ordinary infrastructure doing what it was built to do. The unresolved tension is that conservation authority sits with forest departments while the hazard sits with the power sector, and no rule connects the two. Until that link is made, the threat will keep being measured only after the fact.

Back2Basics: White-rumped Vulture

1. Status: Listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and protected under Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972.
2. Identification: It carries a white neck ruff and a white rump against black and brown plumage.
3. Range and nesting: It is found near human settlements across northern and central India, nesting in tall trees and on cliffs.
4. Ecological role: It is a social scavenger that feeds in flocks on carrion, garbage and slaughterhouse waste, which is how a small population clears waste across a wide landscape.

[2012] Vultures which used to be very common in Indian countryside some years ago are rarely seen nowadays. This is attributed to:

(a) the destruction of their nesting sites by new invasive species disease among them

(b) a drug used by cattle owners for treating their diseased cattle persistent and fatal

(c) scarcity of food available to them

(d) a widespread, persistent and fatal disease among them

Why in the News

A Supreme Court Bench led by the Chief Justice of India directed the Centre to conduct a fresh survey of elephant corridors. The Bench held that these corridors cannot be blocked out of a fear of crop damage, because elephant herds by nature travel long distances. The Bench was hearing a writ petition on managing human-elephant conflict, which had earlier sought to prevent the use of fireballs, spikes and similar materials to drive elephants away. In its order the Bench asked the Centre to indicate the steps taken to prohibit those methods and any other “coercive measure” used to divert the natural movement of elephants. The direction sets a conservation requirement against the immediate economic loss of farmers whose fields lie along those routes.

What is an elephant corridor?

1. Definition: An elephant corridor is a movement pathway connecting two natural habitats, allowing herds to pass between them without entering settled land.
2. The mapped stock: The government’s last major mapping exercise, in 2023, documented 150 elephant corridors across 15 states.
3. Why they carry legal weight: Disrupting a corridor both sparks human-elephant conflict and poses a direct threat to the animals, which is why blockage is treated as a conservation failure rather than a land use choice.

Why do elephants need to move over long distances?

1. They are highly mobile mammals: Asian elephants are highly mobile and social animals, and a male elephant’s average home range, the area it typically uses for food, water and shelter, extends between 50 and 300 sq km.
2. Movement takes more than one form: Elephants move through their range in herds or individually, so a corridor must accommodate both group and solitary passage.
3. Home ranges are not fixed: Ranges extend or contract depending on habitat type, food availability, water sources, population density and human disturbance.
4. Movement is seasonal: Elephant movement is strongly influenced by the seasonal and spatial distribution of food, water and habitat.
5. A documented seasonal pattern: Seasonal migrations into Kerala are common during the dry months, as elephants seek water and food in the relatively moist forests of the Western Ghats, according to a recent Environment Ministry report.
6. Climate has driven movement historically: Climate change and drought have both played a role in forcing elephant migration.

What does an intact corridor actually deliver?

1. Genetic exchange: Corridors allow elephants genetic exchange or dispersal, which maintains diversity in their population pool and prevents isolated herds from inbreeding.
2. Seasonal resource access: Well conserved corridors give elephants access to food and water in natural habitats during seasonal changes.
3. Fewer crop encounters: That access is what prevents elephants entering crop lands, so the corridor is the mechanism that reduces the crop damage farmers fear.
4. Reduced mortality: A functioning pathway removes the need for herds to cross highways, railway lines and settlements, which is where non natural elephant deaths occur.

What is fragmenting the corridors?

1. Infrastructure construction: The major issues in recent disruptions are infrastructure construction and industrial and mining activity along or across corridor routes.
2. Linear infrastructure specifically: Highways, existing and new railway lines, canals and power lines push elephants towards farmlands and human settlements, triggering conflict.
3. Land use change on the fringes: Changing land use, plantations and farmland fencing fragment habitat at its edges, which closes off the approaches to a corridor even where the corridor itself survives.
4. Mining pressure drives displacement: Habitat loss and mining pressure have pushed elephants out of established ranges and into new ones over the past two decades.

Where is the fragmentation worst?

1. India has four principal elephant landscapes: These are the Western Ghats; the North-Eastern Hills and Brahmaputra floodplains; the Shivalik Hills and Gangetic plains; and Central India and the Eastern Ghats.
2. Western Ghats: The habitat of the Western Ghats population is rapidly fragmenting owing to changing land use, plantations and farmland fencing, as noted in the last all-India elephant population estimation report released in 2025.
3. Shivalik and Brahmaputra: The same report recorded similar disruptions in the Shivalik and Brahmaputra plains.
4. Central India and Eastern Ghats: This landscape carries the biggest challenge, with Chhattisgarh receiving elephants arriving from Jharkhand and Odisha over two decades owing to habitat loss and mining pressures.
5. The range is still expanding: Elephants have also expanded their range into parts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, creating conflict in states with no history of managing elephant populations.

What has the Court asked the Centre to do?

1. A fresh survey: The Centre must conduct a fresh survey of elephant corridors, which resets the 2023 mapping exercise as the operative baseline.
2. Crop damage is not a ground for blockage: Corridors cannot be blocked out of a fear of crop damage, since elephant herds by nature travel long distances.
3. An account of prohibition steps: The Centre must indicate the steps taken to prohibit the use of fireballs, spikes and similar materials to drive elephants away.
4. A wider category of prohibited action: The order extends to any other “coercive measure” used to divert the natural movement of elephants, which covers methods the petition did not name.

Challenges to protecting elephant corridors

1. Corridors have no independent legal status: A mapped corridor is not a notified protected area, so land inside it can be diverted for a project without triggering the safeguards that apply to a sanctuary. Eg. The 150 corridors mapped in 2023 span forest, revenue and private land with differing tenure rules. Fix. Notify identified corridors as conservation reserves or ecologically sensitive areas so diversion requires the same clearance as protected area land.
2. The mapping baseline is dated and voluntary: The last major mapping was completed in 2023 and carries no requirement that project appraisals check against it. Eg. The Court had to direct a fresh survey rather than rely on a periodic statutory exercise. Fix. Fix a statutory five year corridor survey cycle and make the corridor layer a mandatory input to environmental clearance appraisals.
3. Linear projects are cleared one at a time: Each highway, railway line, canal and power line is assessed on its own merits, so the cumulative severance of a corridor never appears in any single appraisal. Eg. Elephant movement in Central India was reshaped by two decades of accumulated mining and infrastructure pressure rather than any one project. Fix. Mandate landscape level cumulative impact assessment for all linear infrastructure crossing a mapped corridor.
4. Mitigation structures are built to the wrong specification: Underpasses and overpasses are often sized for smaller species and sited for engineering convenience rather than on observed elephant crossing points. Eg. Corridors carry herds as well as solitary bulls, whose passage needs differ. Fix. Tie animal passage design to radio collar and camera trap movement data for that specific corridor before construction is approved.
5. Corridors cross state boundaries with no joint manager: Elephants moving between Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh pass through three forest administrations with separate budgets and separate priorities. Eg. Chhattisgarh has absorbed elephants displaced from two neighbouring states over two decades. Fix. Constitute statutory inter-state elephant landscape authorities with a pooled budget and a single management plan for each of the four landscapes.
6. Farmers carry the cost of a conservation decision: A ruling that a corridor cannot be blocked leaves the crop losses on the cultivator who farms beside it. Eg. Seasonal migration into Kerala during the dry months moves herds through cultivated valleys. Fix. Link corridor notification to guaranteed, time bound crop compensation through direct benefit transfer, so protection and compensation are notified together.

Conclusion

The Court has established that an elephant corridor is not negotiable against crop protection. The binding constraint is that the network was last mapped in 2023, while infrastructure, mining and land use change have continued to cut across it in all four elephant landscapes. The next step is the Centre’s response to the two directions recorded above, on the fresh survey and on prohibition.

Back2Basics: The Asian Elephant

1. Status: The Asian elephant is listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List and is placed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
2. Domestic protection: It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the highest level of protection available under Indian law.
3. Range: India holds the largest wild population of the species, distributed across the four elephant landscapes covering the Western Ghats, the North East, the Shivaliks and Central India with the Eastern Ghats.

“[2022] With reference to Indian laws about wildlife protection, consider the following statements :

1. Wild animals are the sole property of the government.

2. When a wild animal is declared protected, such animal is entitled for equal protection whether it is found in protected areas or outside.

3. Apprehension of a protected wild animal becoming a danger to human life is sufficient ground for its capture or killing.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct ?

(a) 1 and 2

(b) 2 only

(c) 1 and 3

(d) 3 only