Vulture warrior spreads his wings to give them cover
Bharathidasan’s love for Mother Earth dates back to his student days in the Nineties. He became a member of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) way back in 1991, while he was pursuing his master's in Geography.
Soon enough, he was devouring nature and wildlife magazines and deepening his knowledge of the natural world. In 2002, he founded Arulagam, a non-profit organisation dedicated towards the conservation of endangered flora and fauna, in his home base of Coimbatore. Named after Arulmozhi, a close friend whose zeal for environmentalism he closely shared, Bharathidasan serves as Arulagam’s secretary.
Close to 10 years after he founded Arulagam, he would pick up one cause and make it his life’s mission. A survey he undertook in 2011 along with the BNHS revealed a sharp decline in the vulture population in Tamil Nadu, with the last remaining habitat recorded in the Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR) in Erode, which is now home to four vulture species – the Egyptian vulture, the red-headed vulture, the white-rumped vulture and the long-billed vulture.
His efforts towards conserving and increasing the vulture population earned him international recognition in 2016 at the International Union of Conservation of Nature in Hawaii, where he was honoured with the Biodiversity Hotspot Hero Award.
Such work was not bound to go unnoticed. When the Tamil Nadu Government set up a state-level committee for vulture conservation, Bharathidasan was made a member. Now part of a team preparing the Tamil Nadu Action Plan for Vulture Conservation (TNAPVC), he has his task cut out for him. “My aim is to establish a safe zone for vultures and ensure the availability of safe food so that their population might increase,” he says. He also suggests opening rescue centres and engaging ambulances to take the carcasses of animals found in the city to vulture habitats as one such means.
Farmers living close to reserved forest areas often lose their cattle to periodic attacks by tigers and leopards. To prevent the farmers from poisoning the carcasses of the dead cows as an act of revenge (because the carcasses are eventually eaten by vultures who die of it), Arulagam, with the help of Mariamma Trust, hands out Rs 5,000 as compensation to farmers who lose their cattle to such attacks.
Bharathidasan also emphasised that cattle owners living around vulture habitats should leave safe cattle, i.e. cattle that haven’t been treated with banned drugs like aceclofenac, nimesulide, flunixin and ketoprofen, as feed for vultures. “Resolutions have been passed in around 350 village panchayats that information should be passed on to the forest department in case of vulture death and that the sale and use of diclofenac are banned,” he said.
