Gorillas, cockatoos and frogs are among a list of threatened species to benefit from a $3.3 million aid award, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said yesterday.

The conservation fund Save Our Species (SOS), set up by the IUCN, the World Bank and others, has announced to allocate the cash to more than 20 projects.

SOS is involved in the protection of the Cross River Gorilla and Black Rhino in Africa and the Snow Leopard in Pakistan.

Even as vultures in India are reeling under the threat of extinction, sighting of rare Central Asian vultures in the Jammu region have brought cheer to wildlife experts and environmentalists. Dr CM Seth, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir chapter of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), has claimed to have spotted the vultures called Stepee Eagle.

Rajasthan will soon accord the bio-diversity rich Jawai Bandh forests in Pali district the status of a conservation reserve. The rich forests and the water bodies along the Jawai dam in Sumerpur tehsil have a large presence of crocodiles. The wildlife census in 2011 had put their number at 288.

In the village of Pithauli, surrounded by ripening mustard fields, a woman hauls a cow carcass on a trolley, drops it in an open field, then runs and hides in a nearby hut as dozens of vultures swoop down.

In under half an hour, the carcass has been reduced to picked bones by the dun-colored birds, occasionally squabbling as they feed.

The site is one of a handful of vulture "restaurants" opened to save the birds, which help keep the environment clean by disposing of carrion, from extinction -- and at the same time help impoverished villages become self-sufficient.

Three years after the entire tiger population of the Panna Tiger Reserve was decimated, the Madhya Pradesh government has neither been able to fix responsibility for the disaster, nor has it handed over the enquiry to the Central Bureau of Investigation inspite of requests from the Ministry of Environment and forests and even the Prime Minister's Office.