At dawn, a carcass is dragged into a fenced clearing near Assam’s Kulsi landscape.
By midday, dark shapes begin gathering overhead.
Soon, critically endangered vultures descend in cautious bursts onto the remains of a dead cow certified free of toxic veterinary drugs.
The site is what wildlife experts call a “vulture restaurant”. The name may sound unusual, but the crisis it addresses is anything but.
A vulture restaurant is a managed feeding station designed to give vultures access to safe food in areas where natural food sources have become scarce.
Across India, such feeding stations and vulture-safe zones are emerging as an important conservation measure. The birds face several threats, including starvation, habitat loss, poisoning, electrocution, unsafe veterinary drugs and the loss of nesting sites.
Assam is now preparing to launch its first vulture restaurant in Kulsi, under the guidance of the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centre (VCBC), Rani.
Once among the most abundant birds in the Indian subcontinent, vultures have suffered one of the sharpest population declines recorded among birds. India’s vulture population, estimated at nearly four crore in the 1980s, fell by more than 97 to 99 percent within a few decades.
The White-rumped Vulture suffered an especially devastating decline of nearly 99.9 percent, largely linked to the widespread veterinary use of diclofenac. The painkiller is toxic to vultures when they feed on the carcasses of livestock treated with it.
India banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006. But the recovery of vulture populations has been slow and uneven.
The Better India spoke to Dr Sachin P Ranade, Assistant Director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and senior centre manager of VCBC, Rani, to understand why vultures are still struggling and why an unusual-sounding “vulture restaurant” could play a role in their recovery.
What is diclofenac and why is it harmful to vultures?
When livestock treated with diclofenac died, traces of the drug remained in their tissues.
Vultures feeding on these carcasses could suffer acute kidney failure. Post-mortem examinations found visceral gout, damaged organs and deposits of uric acid coating internal tissues.
India banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006 after sustained efforts by scientists and conservation groups. The government later restricted the use of large multi-dose vials of human diclofenac after they were found to be diverted for veterinary use.
But the damage had already been severe.
“The diclofenac crisis devastated vultures, but the problem today is much larger than a single drug,” says Dr Sachin.
In areas where vulture conservation is working, villagers help identify nesting sites, report poisoned carcasses, protect roosting trees and ensure that livestock carcasses are not contaminated with harmful drugs. Photograph: (iStock)
For more than 25 years, he has worked on vulture conservation at breeding centres and in the field, including remote landscapes where surviving populations continue to depend on fragmented habitats.
Today, he says, vultures face a wider range of threats.
Urban expansion has changed how livestock carcasses are disposed of. Open dumping grounds have disappeared in many areas, traditional grazing landscapes have shrunk and nesting trees are being lost.
“Unsafe veterinary drugs continue to circulate in some regions. Electrocution, poisoning and food scarcity are becoming increasingly visible pressures,” he says.
A recent nationwide assessment by the Wildlife Institute of India found that nearly 70 percent of historically recorded nesting sites have disappeared. Of 425 documented sites, only around 120 remain active today.
In some breeding colonies, researchers have observed chicks dying after parent vultures were unable to find enough food for several days.
That is where the idea of a “vulture restaurant” becomes important.
A feeding station designed for survival
Despite the name, a vulture restaurant is not a wildlife tourism project.
It is a scientifically managed feeding site where livestock carcasses are screened to ensure they are free from toxic veterinary drugs before being placed near traditional nesting and roosting areas.
The aim is simple: provide vultures with safe food in landscapes where it is becoming harder to find.
“Starvation has emerged as a major and often overlooked reason behind vulture decline,” Ranade says.
He points to field observations from Maharashtra, where researchers monitoring White-rumped and Indian vultures documented chicks dying after remaining unfed for nearly 10 consecutive days.
“That confirmed food scarcity was directly affecting breeding success and survival,” he says.
In fragmented landscapes, vultures may have to travel farther to find carcasses. Breeding adults spend more energy searching for food, while chicks remain dependent on their parents in the nest.
Across India, such feeding stations and vulture-safe zones are emerging as an important conservation measure. Photograph: (Mujahid Safodien/AFP)
“Feeding stations provide uncontaminated carcasses close to nesting habitats,” Ranade explains. “The idea is to prevent starvation deaths, improve breeding outcomes and stabilise surviving populations.”
The proposed Kulsi project follows this approach.
Villagers will reportedly be able to deposit livestock carcasses in designated, toxin-free areas where vultures can feed safely.
For Assam, the timing is significant
Earlier this year, Assam released its first captive-bred White-rumped Vultures into the wild, marking an important step in the state’s conservation efforts. Ranade was among the conservationists involved in overseeing the release.
The birds, raised in breeding centres, were gradually introduced to an unfamiliar landscape. Some quickly joined wild vultures circling nearby carcasses, while others initially returned to the safety of their enclosure perches.
Similar releases have taken place in West Bengal and Haryana as India expands captive breeding and reintroduction efforts.
But Ranade stresses that breeding centres alone cannot save the species.
“Breeding can be successful,” he says, “but unless there are safe feeding landscapes outside, their survival remains uncertain.”
The birds that once protected public health
Vultures have long had an uncomfortable place in the human imagination.
They are associated with death, decay and carcasses. Yet their role in the ecosystem is far more important than that image suggests.
Vultures are highly efficient scavengers. Their digestive systems allow them to consume carcasses carrying pathogens that could pose a risk to other animals.
“Their digestive systems are extraordinarily efficient. Vulture stomach acid can neutralise pathogens that would prove dangerous to many other scavengers, including bacteria linked to anthrax, botulism and rabies transmission,” explains Ranade.
A carcass that might otherwise lie exposed for days can be stripped clean within hours by a flock of vultures.
Vultures are highly efficient scavengers. Their digestive systems allow them to consume carcasses carrying pathogens that could pose a risk to other animals. Photograph: (Ishan Pathak)
When vultures disappeared, however, those carcasses did not disappear with them.
Instead, some became food sources for feral dogs and rats.
“Vultures are ecological sanitizers,” Ranade says. “Their decline disrupted the ecological cycle itself.”
That is why the loss of vultures matters beyond forests and rural landscapes. Their disappearance can affect how carcasses are disposed of and how other scavengers interact with them.
For conservationists, feeding stations are therefore more than places where birds are given food. They are part of a broader effort to rebuild landscapes where vultures can survive.
Conservation that depends on villages
Managed feeding programmes and vulture-safe zones are already operating in several states.
Maharashtra’s Raigad district was among the earlier landscapes where feeding stations were used to support local vulture populations.
Jharkhand’s Koderma district established a vulture restaurant supported by carcasses sourced from gaushalas and municipalities.
Gujarat recently announced a “Giddh Restaurant” near the Pavagadh hills for endangered Long-billed Vultures.
In Chhattisgarh’s Indravati Tiger Reserve, conservation efforts combine feeding stations with GPS monitoring and village volunteer networks known as “Giddha Mitra Dal”.
But Ranade says the success of such programmes depends on more than infrastructure.
Local communities have an important role to play.
In areas where vulture conservation is working, villagers help identify nesting sites, report poisoned carcasses, protect roosting trees and ensure that livestock carcasses are not contaminated with harmful drugs.
This community involvement is especially important because carcass dumping sites are often seen as dirty or unsafe spaces. In some villages, vultures are also mistakenly viewed as birds that spread disease rather than help control it.
Changing that perception can be as important as building a feeding station.
A return that is still uncertain
There is cautious hope in Assam’s Kulsi landscape.
Safe feeding grounds could help support breeding colonies. Captive-bred vultures released into the wild will have a better chance of finding uncontaminated food. And local communities could become important partners in protecting the birds and their habitats.
For Ranade and others who have spent decades working on the vulture crisis, the idea of a “vulture restaurant” is ultimately about something much bigger than feeding birds.
It is about giving a species that once played a vital role in India’s landscapes a safer chance to return.
