Vulture populations across Africa and Asia are experiencing unprecedented declines from poisoning, persecution, and habitat loss, creating both profound individual welfare impacts and ecosystem dysfunction from the loss of nature's most efficient scavengers.
Vulture welfare is inseparable from ecosystem function — species whose ecological role involves consuming death provide services that protect the welfare of other species including humans. Their decline creates ecological cascades that harm far more animals than the vultures themselves. The diclofenac crisis demonstrated how a single pharmaceutical management decision could trigger species-level welfare catastrophe at continental scale. Preventing such outcomes requires wildlife welfare consideration in veterinary pharmaceutical approvals before harm occurs rather than after.