Vultures provide essential ecosystem services through carcass removal. Their catastrophic decline across Africa and Asia is an environmental and welfare crisis.
Vulture conservation involves welfare dimensions that extend beyond the direct suffering of poisoned individuals to the ecosystem-level consequences of vulture loss. Vultures dying from carbofuran poisoning or other toxic baits experience acute neurological suffering before death. The scale of poisoning events — where a single poisoned carcass can kill hundreds of vultures simultaneously — makes this one of the most acute wildlife welfare events in African conservation. The ecological consequences of vulture loss — including increased disease transmission from unprocessed carcasses and increased time for scavenging mammals to expose carcasses to disease vectors — represent welfare harms distributed across entire ecosystems. Addressing the poisoning crisis requires both law enforcement and incentive changes for the communities where poisoning events occur.