Indian vulture crisis

Common card · No. 342136

Fifteen species of vulture can be found living in India, but most are now endangered after a rapid and major population collapse exceeding 99.5% in recent decades. In the early 1980s, three species of Gyps vultures (the white-rumped vulture, the long-billed vulture and the slender-billed vulture) had a combined estimated population of 40 million in South Asia, while in 2017 the total population numbered only 19,000 (6,000, 12,000, and 1,000 respectively). A major contributing factor in declining populations of vultures is believed to be the widespread use of drugs such as diclofenac, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) once commonly given to livestock. The drug is believed to have been passed onto the vultures through the flesh of dead cattle who were given diclofenac in their last days of life, which then causes kidney failure in vultures. Data modelling revealed that a tiny proportion (about 0.8%) of livestock carcasses containing diclofenac can cause significant crashes in...

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