Vultures across Africa and Asia are declining at catastrophic rates largely due to deliberate and accidental poisoning, causing immense suffering.
Poisoning inflicts an agonising death on vultures: organophosphate and carbamate poisons cause convulsions, paralysis, and respiratory failure over hours. At mass poisoning events, hundreds of birds die simultaneously in visible and prolonged distress. Beyond individual suffering, vulture population collapse removes ecosystem services — rapid carcass consumption that limits disease spread — affecting the health of countless other species. Welfare intervention operates at multiple scales: legal reform to ban harmful veterinary drugs, enforcement against poachers who poison carcasses, and community education to eliminate retaliatory poisoning of livestock depredators.