Critically Endangered
Indian Vulture
Gyps indicus
The Indian vulture or long-billed vulture is a bird of prey native to the Indian subcontinent.
Appearance
Its body and covert feathers are pale brown with darker flight feathers. It has white thighs with scattered white fluff and broad wings with short tail feathers. It has a small, bare, dark-brown head with a long featherless neck, dark eyes and a long yellowish beak with a pale green-yellow cere.
It is 89–103 cm (35–41 in) long and has a wing span of 2.22–2.58 m (7 ft 3 in – 8 ft 6 in).
Published measurements include mass about 5.515.
Range and habitat
The range of the Indian vulture extended from southeastern Pakistan to south India and to Indochina and the northern Malay Peninsula in the east. It is also found in southwest Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is also found in various land-forms ranging from semi-desert to dry foot hills, open fields and cultivable lands near villages, near garbage dumps and slaughter houses in urban areas.
In 2010, a small population of Indian vulture and three other species of vultures were discovered in the Moyar river valley in Sathyamangalam Wildlife Sanctuary, where 20 nests were sighted with a population of 40 adults.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The Indian vultures generally feed on dead cattle and any leftovers by large predators. Indian vultures nest on cliffs, high buildings, and, more rarely, on trees.
A platform of sticks or twigs lined with leaves with the addition of green leaves advertising nest occupancy and fend off parasites. Indian vultures reach breeding age at about five years old.
In crisis
The Indian vulture is a keystone species that has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2002, as the population has severely declined during the Indian vulture crisis. It is estimated that there are 5,000-15,000 mature individuals in the wild. Beginning in the 1990s, the Indian vulture species suffered a 97% population decrease in its range in the Indian subcontinent over a period of 10–15 years.
The species is classified as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List since 2002 due to the rapid decline in population. This is conjunction with the rapid decline in the population of other related vulture species among them the slender-billed vulture and white-rumped vulture.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Indian Vulture is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Indian Vulture, Wikidata item Q248086. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
