Vultures across Africa and Asia are facing population collapses driven by deliberate poisoning, veterinary drug toxicity, and demand for body parts — causing both individual suffering and ecosystem-level consequences.
Vulture welfare in Africa and Asia involves mass poisoning events of extraordinary scale. When poachers lace carcasses with carbofuran or other toxins to kill vultures — preventing them from alerting anti-poaching patrols — the result is agonizing, convulsive death for hundreds of birds simultaneously. Diclofenac poisoning causes visceral gout — a painful crystallization of uric acid in organs — and kidney failure in vultures who consume carcasses of treated livestock. Traditional medicine demand drives targeted trapping and killing. The ecosystem consequences amplify the welfare impact: vulture population collapse leads to carcass accumulation that supports populations of feral dogs and rats, which are primary rabies and other disease vectors — creating human and animal welfare consequences that ripple far beyond the vultures themselves.