Vultures are critical ecosystem engineers whose decline causes cascading welfare and public health harms. Protecting them requires addressing poisoning, persecution, and trade.
Vulture welfare is intimately linked to their ecosystem function — and their decline creates welfare consequences for many other species. Mass poisoning events cause rapid, painful death in hundreds of vultures simultaneously. Individual birds surviving sublethal doses experience neurological damage, impaired flight, and inability to compete for carcasses. The loss of vulture cleaning services allows anthrax, botulism, and other carcass-associated pathogens to persist longer in ecosystems, increasing disease transmission to other wildlife and livestock. Protecting vultures is thus a welfare priority not just for the birds themselves but for the ecosystems and animals they serve. Carbofuran and other highly toxic pesticides should be banned and prosecuted wherever vulture poisoning occurs.