IWN Report — Tuesday, 22 September 2026
Two of Maharashtra’s tiger reserves have turned out to be among the best places in India to release captive-bred vultures, with survival rates reaching as high as 78 per cent — a result landing just as the government pushes states to open up more Vulture Safe Zones nationwide.
According to the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), 29 vultures released across the Melghat and Pench Tiger Reserves in Maharashtra between December and January have survived at that rate, a finding first reported by Akashvani, India’s state broadcaster, on 6 September.
BNHS said the results follow from where the birds were actually released. Pre-release aviaries were set up inside the reserves’ “prey-rich and inviolate” core zones, rather than at the edges of protected land, where carcasses are more likely to carry the veterinary painkillers that pushed India’s vultures toward collapse from the 1990s onward. The same recovery effort is behind the national push for more Vulture Safe Zones and the breeding work at the Jatayu Conservation Breeding Centre in Haryana, which IWN covered earlier this month.
Whether the same approach works at other release sites remains to be tested. For now, BNHS is calling Melghat and Pench the most successful vulture reintroduction sites in the country, with a survival rate of 78 per cent to show for it.