Vulture

Vultures in south Asia, mainly in India and Nepal, have declined dramatically since the early 1990s. It has been found that this decline was caused by residues of the veterinary drug Diclofenac in animal carcasses.The government of India has taken very late cognizance of this fact and has banned the drug for animals. However, it may take decades for vultures to come back to their earlier population level, if they ever do: without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabies-carrying dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carrion, and age-old practices like the sky burials of the Parsees are coming to an end, permanently reducing the supply of corpses.The same problem is also seen in Nepal where government has taken some late steps to conserve remaining vultures. Similarly, in Central Africa there has also been efforts to conserve the remaining vultures and bring their population numbers back up. This is largely due to the bushmeat trade, "it is estimated > 1 billion kg of wild animal meat is traded" and vultures take up a large percentage of this bushmeat due to their demand in the fetish market. The substantial drop in vulture populations in the continent of Africa is also said to be the result of both intentional and unintentional poisoning, with one study finding it to be the cause of 61% of the vulture deaths recorded.