A new study links the vulture decline in India to deadly bacteria spread, causing about 500,000 deaths.
By the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population in India plummeted to near zeroThe scavenging birds hovered over sprawling landfills, looking for cattle carcasses. Sometimes they would alarm pilots by getting sucked into jet engines during airport take-offs.
Since the 2006 ban on veterinary use of diclofenac, the decline has slowed in some areas, but at least three species have suffered long-term losses of 91-98%, according to the latest Mr Frank and his co-author Anant Sudarshan compared human death rates in Indian districts that once thrived with vultures to those with historically low vulture populations, both before and after the vulture collapse. They also examined rabies vaccine sales, feral dog counts and pathogen levels in the water supply.
These deaths were due to the spread of disease and bacteria that vultures would have otherwise removed from the environment.Rabies vaccine sales rose during that time but were insufficient. Unlike vultures, dogs were ineffective at cleaning rotting remains, leading to bacteria and pathogens spreading into drinking water through runoff and poor disposal methods. Faecal bacteria in the water more than doubled.
The 2019 livestock census in India recorded more than 500 million animals, the highest in the world. Vultures, highly efficient scavengers, were historically relied upon by farmers to swiftly remove livestock carcasses. The decline of vultures in India is the fastest ever recorded for a bird species and the largest since the passenger pigeon’s extinction in the US, according to researchers.
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