KEY POINTS:
A new colony of one of the world's most threatened birds has been discovered in a remote area of Cambodia.
Located in the jungles east of the Mekong River in the country's Stung Treng Province, the spectacular find comprises the only-known breeding group of slender-billed vultures in all of South-East Asia.
"We discovered the nests on top of a hill where two other vulture species were also found," said Song Chansocheat, manager of the Cambodia Vulture Conservation Project, a government scheme supported by the World Conservation Society, BirdLife International, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, and Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.(RSPB).
"Amazingly, there were also a host of other globally threatened species of birds and primates, It's a very special place."
The discovery has been particularly welcomed by conservationists because the slender-billed vulture is one of three vulture types whose populations have been decimated in the last ten years by the effects of a drug used to treat cattle - on the carcasses of which they feed.
Millions of birds belonging to the three species - the closely-related white-backed and long-billed vultures are the other two - have died from kidney failure after consuming cattle treated with the anti-inflammatory painkiller, Diclofenac.
The populations of all three are thought to have fallen by as much as 99 per cent, especially in India- and the slender-billed vulture has suffered the most.
- INDEPENDENT
