Vulture Action Plan

Story hook

In 1992, you could see vultures circling over any north Indian landfill, riverbank, or cattle-disposal ground. India's three resident Gyps species — the white-rumped (G. bengalensis), the Indian (G. indicus), and the slender-billed (G. tenuirostris) — collectively numbered ~ 40 million birds. By 2007, those numbers had crashed to ~ 6,000. A 99.9 % decline in 15 years — the fastest collapse of any vertebrate species ever recorded.

The cause turned out to be a single molecule: diclofenac, a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug introduced to India around 1994 for cattle. When a treated cow or buffalo died and was scavenged by vultures, the drug caused fatal kidney failure within days. A single poisoned carcass could kill 70 vultures at one feeding.

The collapse was a public-health crisis too. With vultures gone, rotting carcasses bred bacteria (anthrax, brucellosis), rabid dogs filled the scavenger vacuum (dog population doubled, contributing to ~ 47,000 human rabies deaths/year), and Parsi communities — who rely on vultures for sky-burial in Towers of Silence — were left without their religious rite.

This file is about India's response: the 2006 ban on veterinary diclofenac, the Vulture Conservation Breeding Centres, the SAVE consortium, and the National Action Plan for Vulture Conservation 2020-2025.

Why this matters for UPSC

The vulture story is the textbook case of an "ecosystem service collapse" — UPSC has asked Prelims MCQs in 2014, 2017, 2020, 2022 (diclofenac, Gyps species, breeding centres). Mains has asked about the One Health framework and scavenger ecology. Interview boards in Rajasthan, MP, Maharashtra ask about local vulture conservation.