By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, Sept. 7: The 11th International Vulture Awareness Day is being marked on Saturday by organising awareness programmes.
Each year, first Saturday of September is marked as the International Vulture Awareness Day.
This day is marked to spread messages about the importance of vultures, causes of decline in their population and importance of their conservation.
Marking Vulture Awareness Day at the national level started in South Africa in 2005 and it was transformed into International Vulture Awareness Day in 2009.
Nepal has started celebrating the day since 2009, said Krishna Prasad Bhusal, vulture conservation programme officer at BCN.
An awareness rally, college and school level competition on the conservation of the big birds, interaction and radio programme will be organsied throughout the week.
Nepal’s vulture habitats are mainly in the Terai districts- Nawalparasi, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, Banke, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur.
BCN is working to update current vulture number of the country, said Bhusal.
Vultures are an ecologically vital group of birds that face a range of threats in many areas that they occur. Populations of many species are under pressure and some species are facing extinction.
According to a survey report of the Bird Conservation Nepal (BCN), population of the critically endangered Gyps species vultures has recovered since 2014. Population of these birds had declined between 2002 and 2012.
Number of these vultures declined to 43 in 2012 from 205 in 2002. The population remained stable in 2012 and 2013. Thereafter, its population moved upward from 2014 and reached 110 in 2018, according to BCN.
The recovery of its population was the result of an integrated approach of vulture recovery programme that included advocacy, education, monitoring, research, supplementary feeding and site protection to help implement Nepal’s Vulture Conservation Action Plan, said Bhusal.