They were the fastest-disappearing birds on Earth, wiped out by 99.9% by a single cattle drug. Twenty years after the ban that saved them, Asia’s vultures have been hauled back from the edge of extinction.
- Asia’s vultures crashed by up to 99.9% before scientists pinned the cause on diclofenac, a livestock painkiller that poisoned birds feeding on cattle carcasses.
- India, Pakistan and Nepal banned veterinary diclofenac in 2006; captive breeding, a safe alternative drug (meloxicam) and “Vulture Safe Zones” followed.
- The RSPB calls it “one of the biggest conservation success stories of our time,” though India’s populations have only stabilised, not fully recovered, as illegal diclofenac persists.
At the start of this century, the skies of South Asia were emptying and nobody knew why. Surveys by the Bombay Natural History Society, supported by the RSPB, showed that by 2007 white-rumped vulture numbers had dropped by 99.9% across northern India in little over a decade – the most precipitous decline of any formerly abundant bird species in the world.
Carcasses were tested for pesticides, heavy metals and pollutants. Nothing fit. Then, in 2003, researchers found the culprit: diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug newly popular with livestock owners. Vultures that scavenged treated cattle were dying of kidney failure.
In 2006, the governments of India, Pakistan and Nepal banned veterinary diclofenac and a vulture-safe alternative, meloxicam, was identified. The RSPB calls that moment “a monumental step in safeguarding the future of vultures in south Asia and one that undoubtedly prevented their extinction.”
Why care, half a world away? Because vultures are nature’s clean-up crew, stripping carcasses that would otherwise rot, spread disease and foul water. When they vanished, those problems did not.
The fix went beyond the ban. Conservationists set up breeding centres for three species that had never been bred in captivity, created “Vulture Safe Zones” – 100km-radius areas cleared of toxic drugs – and in 2021 declared the world’s first truly safe zone in Nepal, where diclofenac had been driven to zero.
The recovery is real but uneven, and the RSPB is candid about it. In Nepal, monitoring shows a rapid if partial rebound; in India, populations have stabilised at a new low level rather than surged back. The most serious remaining threat is the continued manufacture of large, multi-dose vials of diclofenac by Indian companies.
Still, the trajectory has flipped from freefall to hope.
“The cooperative efforts of NGOs and Governments across South and South East Asia, particularly in India and Nepal, supported by other international organisations over 30 years are bringing one of the biggest conservation efforts close to a successful conclusion, saving three iconic species from the brink of global extinction,” said Andy Evans, the RSPB’s head of global species recovery.
Twenty years on from the drug ban, the charity says, the future for Asia’s vultures looks a lot brighter.
