Spectre of Extinction: India Vulture Population Crashes (Culprit Found)

The spectre of extinction: Indian vulture population crashes
The cause of the 99 per cent drop in the Indian vulture population has been identified. But can this essential element of the ecosystem ever recover? Michael McCarthy reports

The numbers of the three main species, the white-backed, the long-billed and the slender-billed vultures, are thought to have dropped by more than 99 per cent across India. The white-backed, in particular, was thought to be the commonest large bird of prey in the world, as common in India as sparrows; now it has been reduced to a tiny fraction of its former numbers, in what has been a social as well as an environmental calamity.

For such are the structures of Indian society that vultures play several essential roles. Perhaps the most important is as scavengers of cow carcasses. As cows are sacred to Hindus, they are not slaughtered, but allowed to die naturally; in cities, their carcasses are taken to carcass dumps; in the countryside, they are left where they fall. Since time immemorial vultures have ensured that these carcasses, thousands upon thousands of them every year, are not a risk to public health: they can reduce a dead cow to a pile of clean-picked bones in an hour.

Another important role for the birds has been in the customs of the Parsees, or Zoroastrians, who are not allowed burial or cremation by their religion, and leave their dead on so-called "towers of silence" so they can be eaten by vultures in a "sky burial".

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Last year, however, the mystery was dramatically solved: the culprit was found to be not a virus at all, but a veterinary product, a painkilling drug given to cattle, diclofenac. Scientists found that the drug, which was harmless to humans and to cattle themselves, was highly toxic to vultures of the genus Gyps. (The white-backed vulture is Gyps bengalensis, the long-billed vulture Gyps indicus, and the slender-billed vulture, Gyps tenuirostris.)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=640631

My Comment: The Message From The Dodo-It's All Connected

I read a short while ago that the cause had been found to be this drug. I have seen the African White-Backed Vulture and it is a most entertaining bird to watch.

http://www.kenyabirds.org.uk/wb_vulture.htm

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.
--Cree Indian Proverb

Gyps bengalensis


Gyps indicus


Gyps tenuirostris

It's very good this has been discovered before any of them went extinct. Now if India will just ban the use of this particular veterinary drug.