Asian Vulture
Crisis Town Meeting
This activity can be used as an extension to the
Asian Vulture Crisis Activity, or can
be used alone to help students to explore all sides and viewpoints in this
current-day biological crisis. Go to the “Asian Vulture Crisis Classroom
Activity” for some background information that you may
wish to share with your students before the town meeting begins.
The idea is for
each group of students to be assigned a role, and to explore the responses to
the questions below from the point of view of the social group they are
representing. It may work best for the instructor to be the mediator for the
town meeting, and to insert relevant pieces of information into the town meeting
as needed (please refer to “Tips for the Mediator” below.) Students
may also go to www.peregrinefund.org and click on
Conservation Projects→
Asian Vulture Crisis to research information before
holding the town meeting.
The Town Meeting:
1. Download the
Asian Vulture Crisis Town Meeting Role Cards.
2. Divide the students in the class into one of the
following groups. If time allows, have students do research in order to expand
on the information provided on each card.
- Livestock Owners
- Parsi Religious Leaders
- Department of Environmental Protection
- Pharmaceutical Company Executives
- Members of the Asian Vulture Crisis Research Team
3. As the mediator, ask each
of the groups of students to respond to the following questions from the
perspective of his/her assigned role. When appropriate, add information from
“Tips for the Mediator” (below), to keep the discussion factual. Also,
allow students to comment on the statements of other groups…all issues are open
to discussion.
A. What problems have members of your group encountered
since the decline of the vulture population?B. Are there ways to solve
these problems without re-introducing vultures?
C. What will it require (financially or otherwise) to initiate
alternative solutions?
D. Can we prevent complete vulture
extinction? If so, how?
Tips
for the Mediator:
- Diclofenac breaks
down in the body after about 3 days, and is then completely out of the system.
Breakdown ceases once the livestock is dead.
- It is possible to
build up a resistance to diclofenac. Therefore you would need to take
increasingly higher doses over time to feel the pain-killing effects.
- Diclofenac is not
just for animals. Its primary role is as an anti-inflammatory for humans, and
it is sold in worldwide markets, including the
U.S.
- Livestock owners
will have the added expense of burning the carcasses of dead animals now that
vultures are not present to clean the bones.
- The Peregrine
Fund scientists currently operate a “vulture restaurant” where vultures can come
for a fresh, uncontaminated carcass. It works well during breeding
season when the birds are tied to nest sites. In the non-breeding season,
however, fewer vultures visit the restaurant regularly.
- People of the Parsi religion came up with a non-vulture solution to their problem. They
constructed huge solar discs on the Towers of Silence. These discs reflect
sunlight to desiccate the bodies. This process takes longer than having
vultures pick the bodies clean, but does not conflict with Parsi religious
beliefs.
- So far, only one
state in India officially banned diclofenac. The difficulty lies in getting
government officials to see the gravity of the situation and cutting through the
legal red-tape.
- Ninety percent of
veterinarians and pharmacists in India are funded by the government. Therefore,
if diclofenac were banned, only 10% of vets would be able to prescribe
diclofenac.
- Despite efforts
to get the word out about the Asian Vulture Crisis, many local people still do
not know that there is a problem, and many local vets do not know of the hazards
associated with prescribing diclofenac. Mass dissemination of information
is, logistically, more complicated in these Asian countries due to the local
citizens’ limited access to modern communication.
- Population decline in larger birds, like vultures, is more dramatic since
pairs only rear one chick per year. Therefore, in times of crisis, the
mature adult population of birds can often decrease faster than equal numbers
of chicks hatched.
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