Why Vulture Extinction Is a Red Alert for Planetary Collapse

Climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse are inseparable. They feed each other in dangerous loops. The extinction of vultures shows how.

Vultures, nature’s sanitation crew, are vanishing at an alarming rate. Photo by Casey Allen on Unsplash

Vultures, so often characterised as sinister omens of death, are nature’s most efficient sanitation crew. They can strip a carcass to the bone in hours, preventing disease and keeping ecosystems stable. They are our climate allies, stopping millions of tonnes of carbon from being released into the atmosphere. Yet these guardians of life are vanishing in silence — and their loss is a red alert that Earth itself is on the brink of collapse.

Bacteria play a similar function to vultures in nature; they can also break down bodies, but they do so very slowly. Rotting corpses release carbon dioxide (CO2). The longer a corpse takes to rot, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. By consuming flesh directly, vultures short-circuit that carbon release. Scientists estimate that their scavenging prevents CO2 emissions of up to 60 million tonnes — the equivalent of around 12 million cars.