Vultures across Africa and Asia face catastrophic population declines from poisoning. Individual suffering from toxic exposure and population collapse create an urgent welfare and conservation emergency.
Vulture poisoning causes agonizing deaths for individual birds who experience neurological symptoms, paralysis, and prolonged dying from toxic compounds. Deliberate mass poisoning events that kill hundreds of vultures simultaneously represent acute welfare catastrophes for entire local populations. The welfare harms of diclofenac poisoning in Asian vultures include severe gout, liver failure, and painful death over hours to days. Both deliberate poisoning by poachers and inadvertent poisoning from veterinary drugs represent systemic threats requiring different intervention strategies. Banning veterinary diclofenac use in vulture range countries, combined with community education and law enforcement against deliberate poisoning, addresses welfare harms at individual and population scales simultaneously.