• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Earth Wise

A look at our changing environment.

  • Home
  • About Earth Wise
  • Where to Listen
  • All Articles
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Health / Trouble For Vultures

Trouble For Vultures

June 3, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/EW-06-03-16-Trouble-for-Vultures.mp3

When we think of vultures, we picture big, ugly birds circling over a carcass in the desert.  They are a stereotypical harbinger of death.  But in many parts of the world, vultures are in danger of disappearing.  Our knee-jerk reaction might well be “good riddance”, but as is the case for pretty much all participants in ecosystems, vultures have an important role to play.  And when they aren’t around to play that role, bad things can happen.

The main threat to vultures, according to a new report in Biological Conservation, is the presence of toxins in the carrion they consume.  Poisoned carcasses are a serious threat because dozens or even hundreds of vultures can feast on a single carcass.  Sometimes these toxins are present because people were using them to kill animals.  In the 1990s in India, a veterinary drug given to cattle turned out to be deadly to vultures who fed on cattle carcasses and decimated the vulture population.

In many places, vultures eat more meat than all other predators combined.  When vulture populations decline, other scavenger populations increase to take advantage of the uneaten carrion.  Species like crows, rats and feral dogs become abundant.  Whereas vultures’ powerful digestive juices kill of nearly all bacteria and viruses that are present in carrion, these other scavengers instead can spread diseases such as rabies as a result of feeding on the carcasses of rabid animals.  This happened in India in the 1990s and a rabies outbreak there killed nearly 50,000 people.

Basically, vultures serve as a barrier to prevent diseases from proliferating in dead animals and spreading to humans.  Their threatened survival is bad news.

**********

 

Web Links

Why vultures matter, and what we lose if they’re gone

Photo, posted May 21, 2010, courtesy of Henrique Pinto via Flickr.

 

‘Trouble for Vultures’ from Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. 

Filed Under: Health, Our Environment, Sustainable Living, Wildlife and Habitat Tagged With: bacteria, carcass, carcasses, crows, danger, death, disease, dogs, ecosystem, harbinger, India, poisons, predators, prevention, rabies, rabies outbreak, rats, scavengers, toxins, trouble, vultures

Primary Sidebar

Recent Episodes

  • Protected Areas Are Not Protecting Insects | Earth Wise
  • Self-Deicing Roads | Earth Wise
  • Sea Level Rise And Global Security | Earth Wise
  • Keeping The Keeling Curve Going | Earth Wise
  • Great Salt Lake In Danger | Earth Wise

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)

Copyright © 2023 ·