Cinereous Vulture released in Thailand, not in Mongolia

A while ago a post (click here) appeared at Birding Mongolia, reporting on the planned release of a Cinereous Vulture in Mongolia. Here are the latest news on the project.

_________________

Dear all,

A Cinereous Vulture and four Himalayan Griffons have been released on a mountain in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand along Myanmar-Thailand border on 10 May 2007. The vultures had been found exhausted due to starvation in Thailand in January and have been rehabilitated since to gain strength.

The main reason for not being able to fly the Cinereous Vulture to Mongolia was that both China and South Korea refused the short transit to Ulaanbaatar, reasoning the Bird Flu situation in Thailand, even though this particular vulture has been tested twice in a period of two months and it was confirmed that it is free of the deadly virus by a WHO-certified National Institute of Animal Health Laboratory in Thailand.

All vultures have a yellow wing tag. The Cinereous Vulture is tagged with V1 on its right wing as well as fitted with a satellite telemetry unit. The Himalayan Griffons are tagged with V4, V5, V6 and V7 marks on the left wing. Click here to see photos at the Thai Raptor Group website (scroll down to the end of the page).

I would be grateful to receive sightings of the released vultures. Please submit sightings of them with the number on the wing tag (if visible) to fvetchk(at)ku.ac.th or trogon(at)gmail.com.

The release operation is part of Fly the Vulture Home Project, which is the cooperation of Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST), Department of National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, Kasetsart University's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Mongolia's Wildlife Science and Conservation Center and Thai Raptor Group.

Cheers,
Chaiyan

Chaiyan Kasorndorkbua, DVM, PhD
Department of Veterinary Pathology
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Kasetsart University
Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand