Shift in India’s Vulture Population Linked to Half a Million Human Deaths

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Shift in India’s Vulture Population Linked to Half a Million Human Deaths

A cattle painkiller introduced in the 1990s led to the unexpected ****** of India’s vulture populations, which still haven’t recovered to their former glory.

Some might have said ‘good riddance’ to this much-maligned, ******-associated bird, but there’s a devastating human cost, and a new study reveals the shocking numbers, linking their absence to the deaths of over half a million people.

The analysis from the US and *** suggests human mortality in districts affected by vulture loss increased by more than 4 percent because of the sanitation ‘shock’ that ensued, causing an estimated US$69.4 billion in economic damages annually from 2000 to 2005.

A

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, vultures’ meticulous feasting cleans carcasses down to the bone, leaving no muscle to rot, while others of their ilk – such as dogs and rats – are not only messy eaters, but ******** carriers themselves.

Vultures can strip a cow skeleton in 40 minutes, and this efficiency led to their downfall once veterinary use of the ***** diclofenac emerged in India in 1994. In just ten years after its introduction into the ecosystem, the vulture population plummeted from an estimated 50 million birds to a couple thousand.

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Given to cattle to treat pain and inflammation, diclofenac ******** in a cow’s system for

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. ***** cows sometimes **** before they metabolize the *****, and in areas without access to expensive animal incinerators, vultures have long offered their body disposal services to the agricultural sector.

But remnants of diclofenac in ***** cows are poisonous to the raptors, whose kidneys become damaged. Unable to pass in their ******, uric acid

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in the vulture’s blood, reaching up to ten times the normal level. Uric acid crystals are often found on the organs of vultures that ***** from exposure to diclofenac.

It wasn’t until several

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named diclofenac as the vulture’s vice that countries in South Asia began to ban its use in livestock. But the

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, with this unlikely

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rendered functionally extinct in India.

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