Vultures across Africa and Asia face catastrophic population declines from poisoning — both targeted and incidental — causing immense suffering and ecological collapse.
Vulture poisoning causes agonizing deaths at massive scale. Birds that ingest poisoned carcasses suffer convulsions, organ failure, and prolonged death. A single poisoning event can kill an entire local population of a slow-reproducing species. Diclofenac poisoning from cattle carcasses in South Asia caused one of the fastest wildlife population crashes ever recorded, with multiple vulture species declining by over 99 percent in decades. The suffering of individual animals is compounded by the ecological catastrophe — vulture decline leads to increased rabies, anthrax, and other diseases as carcasses go unconsumed.