How The Collapse of India’s Vultures Led to Half a Million Human Deaths

And still, there is no better time to be alive than today

A wake of vultures — possibly a mix of Himalayan Griffons and Indian Vultures — feed on a buffalo in Panna Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh. (Source: Nature In Focus)

With their scruffy, ragged appearance, their hooked beaks, and signature bald heads atop their hunched shoulders, vultures have long been associated with death, and perhaps for good reason. Their ominous presence circling the skies, looking for dead and decaying animals to scavenge, evokes a sense of dread and unease. They were even depicted as part of Scar’s lackeys in “The Lion King”, portraying the parasitic darker side of nature’s order in the Circle of Life.

They do have a sneaky and untrustworthy look, yes.The real-life role of vultures is far more complex and crucial.

Their story is not just one of dark opportunism and self-serving action; it’s a tale of ecological importance and unexpected altruism in the fight for public health.

And unlike their fictional counterparts, their decline has severe consequences.

The Scavengers Fallacy

In India, home to over 500 million livestock, vultures (Gyps indicus) are more than just eerie sky-dwellers. They are keystone species, providing a crucial public health service: they don’t just clean up disease-ridden livestock carcasses from the environment; by removing this food source, they curb the populations of other, more dangerous scavengers, such as feral dogs that can transmit rabies. Without vultures, farmers end up disposing of dead livestock in waterways, spreading even more disease.

And that’s exactly what happened.

In 1994, farmers started using diclofenac, a common painkiller, on their livestock. Unbeknownst to them, this drug was a lethal poison to vultures, causing kidney failure and eventually leading to their deaths. The cause remained a mystery until 2004. By then, a patent expiration had driven down the cost of diclofenac, flooding the veterinary market with cheap, generic variants. What followed was the fastest population collapse of a bird species in recorded history, plummeting from 50 million individuals to just a few thousand in a mere decade.