Solved: Why vultures are disappearing

Paris, Jan 29: Scientists believe they have figured out the baffling decline of vultures in Pakistan and India , declaring that the phenomenon is due to toxic residues from a veterinary drug.
Vultures which feed on the carcasses of livestock recently given diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory widely used on the sub-continent, build up such levels of the drug that they suffer kidney failure, they report in Friday's issue of Nature, the British science weekly.


Experts have been struggling for years to explain a decline of more than 95 per cent in the past decade of many populations of the Oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis), a bird that pays a vital link in the food chain.

Once one of the commonest raptors on the Indian continent, the creature is now listed as critically endangered.

The researchers led by Lindsay Oaks, a veterinary microbiologist at Washington State University , linked high levels of diclofenac with death from visceral gout, a degenerative kidney disease, among 259 vultures they autopsied in Pakistan .

The team tested by their theory by feeding captive vultures the drug either directly or indirectly, using meat from the carcasses of buffaloes or goats that had been treated with it. Bureau Report