KATHMANDU — The story of South Asia’s vultures has been a tragedy played out at warp speed, especially for griffon vultures, characterized by a slim head and long, slender neck, and belonging to the genus Gyps. Populations of these raptors are believed to have collapsed by as much as 99% between the 1990s and early 2000s. Until 2004, the cause of this precipitous decline was a mystery. That year, U.S. veterinarian J. Lindsay Oaks and his team reported a high correlation between the kidney failure that they found was killing vultures, and residues of diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug given to livestock. The vultures, essentially, were being poisoned by feeding on carrion that had been fed the drug. The finding sent shockwaves across the Indian subcontinent, and governments started testing the hypothesis among their own vulture populations. After finding strong evidence that this was indeed the case, countries across the region and beyond started taking active measures to save the birds of prey. Autopsies showed that when an animal treated with diclofenac died, traces of the medicine remained in carcass for up to a week. Vultures that fed on the carcasses experienced a spike uric acid level in the blood and developed visceral gout, preventing the kidney from filtering out uric acid, and eventually leading to the death of the bird. A single contaminated cow carcass could kill around 350-800 vultures, researchers found. Krishna Prasad Bhusal has been at the forefront of vulture conservation and research in Nepal since the diclofenac…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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