In the last two years (2021-2022), the Central Asian Vultures project team has tagged eight Egyptian vultures in Uzbekistan with the goal of identifying for the first time the migration routes and wintering sites of this endangered species in Asia. Seven of the eight vultures migrated to the state of Rajasthan in India where they have spent the winter months (Figure 1). A study on Egyptian vultures migrating from Kazakhstan by the Biodiversity Research and Conservation Center and Russian Raptor Research and Conservation Network showed similar results with vultures wintering in India. The combined results of these studies highlights the importance of India in the population dynamics of Egyptian Vulture breeding in central Asia.
In this regard, last week, Dr Vladimir Dobrev ( Egyptian vulture Conservation officer at Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife Bulgaria and Co-founder of the Central Asian Vultures) visited Rajasthan to further explore one of the wintering congregation sites, Bikaner, where several of the tracked vultures reside. Bikaner contains a well-known carcass dump site that supports thousands of vultures from different species during the winter. During the visit (9-14th January 2023) Dr Dobrev counted a minimum of 1000 Egyptian vultures, which included two that had been tagged by the team in Uzbekistan. Along with them there were at least 800 Griffon vultures, 16 Cinereous vultures, six Himalayan vultures and 1000 Steppe eagles.
