Inadvertent poisoning of eagles on the Indian subcontinent is forcing some communities to abandon ancient customs.
Traditional Zoroastrian funeral rites are becoming increasingly impossible to perform due to the precipitous decline of eagles in India, Iran and Pakistan.
For millennia, Parsi communities have traditionally disposed of their dead in named structures dakhma or “towers of silence”. These circular, elevated edifices are designed to prevent contamination of the soil and the sacred elements of earth, fire and water by corpses, writes The Guardian.
The bodies are placed atop the towers, where they decompose, while vultures and other scavengers eat the flesh off the bones. After being bleached by the sun and wind for up to a year, the bones are collected in an ossuary pit in the center of the tower. Lime hastens their gradual disintegration, and the remaining material, along with rainwater runoff, is filtered through charcoal and sand before being washed into the sea.
“We are no longer able to fulfill our traditions,” said Hoshang Kapadia, an 80-year-old Karachi resident. “We lost a way of life, our culture.”
Kapadia explained that the purpose behind Parsi burial customs was to “take less and give more” to the world. “The whole idea is not to pollute the earth,” he said
Eagles gather on a Parsi ‘tower of silence’, circa 1880. Offering the dead body to the birds is seen as the devout Zoroastrian’s ultimate act of charity. Photo: Sean Sexton/Getty Images
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Karachi, which is built on a riverine ecosystem on the west bank of the Indus River Delta, is home to only 800 Parsis out of a population of 20 million. The city only has two towers of silence left, both barely functional.
Another Karachi Parsi, Shirin, said, “The mystical eye of the eagle is believed to help in the cosmic transition of the soul, and offering the deceased body to birds is considered the ultimate act of charity by the Zoroastrian devotee.”
“Massive urbanization and environmental changes in Karachi have led us to re-examine our funeral rites because the dakhmas they were usually built on hilltops in locations far from urban areas.
“Our tradition is dying. Our culture is dying in a time of increasing environmental change.”
Unlike many scavengers, vultures are classified as “obligate”. This means that they do not opportunistically switch between predation and capture as their mammalian counterparts do, but rely solely on locating and feeding on animal carcasses.
In recent decades, eagles have died in large numbers across the Indian subcontinentmainly due to accidental poisoning with the anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, which is widely administered to cattle in India and Pakistan.
When these cattle die, the vultures feed on their carcasses and ingest the drug, which causes painful swelling, inflammation, and eventually kidney failure and death in the vultures. Research in 2007 estimated that about 97% of the three main eagle species in the India and the surrounding region have disappeared.
India’s Parsi community is exploring breeding eagles in captivity and using “solar concentrators” to speed up the decomposition of bodies. Since solar concentrators only work in clear weather, some have been forced to opt for burial.
Kapadia said, “The Parsis of Karachi [sunt obligați să] opt for alternative methods of disposal such as cremation or burial in designated Parsi cemeteries as the two towers of silence in Karachi are barely functional”. He added that when the number of eagles declined at the towers of silence, some community members suggested creating a small captive group of eagles in an aviary to continue the traditional practice.
To prevent the extinction of eagle species, scientists have recommended banning the use of diclofenac in animals, a move so far taken by India, Pakistan and Nepal. Captive-bred eagles have also been released into the wild in India in an attempt to boost threatened populations.
