Vulture population dwindles despite drug ban

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13-06-2025

Amid the diverse forests of southern India, across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, a silent crisis is unfolding, threatening the survival of nature's most efficient scavengers: vultures.
A synchronised vulture survey conducted across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka in February 2025 estimated 390 vultures. While this is higher than the previous year's estimate of 320 vultures, it is still significantly less than historical populations. The survey recorded 157 vultures in Tamil Nadu – the white-rumped vulture (110), long-billed vulture (31) red-headed vulture (11) and the Egyptian vulture (5). According to the IUCN Red List, the first three are critically endangered, while the latter is endangered.
The root cause for the decline in vultures in India has been the pharmaceutical drug known as diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID, used to treat cattle. Vultures that ingest diclofenac residues from the carcasses of treated cattle face severe health complications such as renal failure and even death, leading to catastrophic declines in their populations.
The drop in vulture population in India, due to the impacts of diclofenac resulted in the government banning the drug for veterinary use in 2006. Other similar drugs, such as aceclofenac, ketoprofen and nimesulide, were also found to be fatally toxic and subsequently banned.
'These banned NSAIDs work miraculously on cattle, relieving pain and inflammation almost immediately, as their half-life – the time it takes for 50% of the drug to metabolise and take effect – is the shortest and fastest,' says K Vijayakumar, a veterinary doctor from Erode, a city in Tamil Nadu. 'However, these drugs often lead to renal failure [in vultures] due to a spike in uric acid levels after ingestion. Vultures are not biologically equipped to handle such elevated levels of uric acid, resulting in kidney failure and ultimately death.'
'If a group of vultures feeds on one such carcass, the whole group may die, not immediately, but somewhere else, unnoticed,' explains Rajkumar Devaraje Urs, Managing trustee of Wildlife Conservation Foundation, Mysore.
Despite the bans on these harmful drugs, they continue to slip through the cracks of enforcement, quietly decimating vulture populations across India.
A ban ignored
After the 2006 ban on veterinary use, diclofenac continued to be sold in large multi-dose vials (30 ml) for human use. This facilitated the illegal use of diclofenac on cattle, contributing to a further decline in vulture populations.
In response, the India's health ministry issued a blanket ban on multi-dose vials of diclofenac on July 17, 2015. Though a pharmaceutical company challenged this ban, the Madras High Court upheld the ban in 2017.
In some places, this ban is being followed strictly. In the Nilgiris, for example, a pharmacist, on condition of anonymity as he is speaking on a sensitive topic, confirms that most retail stores now refuse to sell diclofenac without prescriptions, even for human use.
'We have put up boards clearly stating the drugs sold here are for human use only,' he says. 'Whenever a farmer approaches our shop for veterinary care, we direct them to veterinary doctors for correct diagnosis and treatment.'
He adds that it has become nearly impossible to source any of the banned drugs especially in the Nilgiris. 'Diclofenac, in particular, is no longer supplied to us by wholesale distributors – even for human use,' he says.
But this is not true across all regions. Rajkumar points out that large multi-dose vials remain widely available and are still being misused in rural areas for treating livestock, bypassing prescription requirements.
S Bharathidasan, co-founder and secretary of the non-governmental organisation Arulagam based in Coimbatore, who actively works on vulture conservation, also says that vials of the drug, some dated as recently as 2022, are still available in the market despite the ban, particularly in places like MM Hills and Gundlupet, which fall outside the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve.
'From 2016 to 2021, 104 cases were filed for misuse of diclofenac for veterinary purposes, and nearly all resulted in convictions and a few are yet to receive the final judgement,' says MN Sreedhar, Director of Drugs Control, Tamil Nadu. He emphasises that the situation is currently under control and that enforcement actions in one region often have a deterrent effect elsewhere.
He mentioned that the department has been particularly vigilant in districts like Coimbatore, Erode, Tiruppur, and Namakkal, based on the advice of Supriya Sahu, the Additional Chief Secretary for Tamil Nadu's Environment, Climate Change and Forests Department.
'In Coimbatore, two licenses have already been cancelled, and five cases are under investigation, with show-cause notices issued. Depending on the response and severity of violations, decisions are made to either suspend or cancel licenses,' he says.
IMAGE Egyptian vulture circle over carcasses of livestock at a garbage dump. Credit: Sarusscape via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Unregulated veterinary practices
According to Rajkumar, under-resourced veterinary departments exacerbate the misuse of diclofenac. 'As they are unable to attend to every call, retired personnel or untrained assistants step in,' he notes.
Vijayakumar adds that cattle inseminators and other non-qualified personnel often act as de facto veterinarians in rural areas, prescribing over-the-counter medications without any formal training.
'These untrained individuals dispense veterinary drugs indiscriminately, with no understanding of correct dosages, side effects, or knowledge of bans on certain drugs,' he explains. He says that, in some cases, even farmers buy and administer medicines themselves – sometimes in doses exceeding lethal limits – to avoid paying a veterinarian's fee.
'Good practitioners avoid unnecessary drugs when natural remedies could suffice. But what we see on the ground is alarming – quacks administering lethal doses, often continuing treatment for days just based on a cow's visible pain, without proper diagnosis,' he says.
Even a slight overdose, just 30 ml extra, can cause fatal side effects like bloody diarrhea in cattle. 'We can't always weigh cows accurately, which adds to the risk,' Vijayakumar explains. 'Farmers and quacks often don't even know about vultures, let alone the indirect impact of these drugs. Education and awareness are urgently needed, along with strict government intervention to regulate the use of veterinary medicine.'
Bharathidasan suggests that veterinary care should be brought under the government. 'The Tamil Nadu government should make veterinary doctors widely available on call at an affordable cost. This approach would simplify the complex issues of quackery and illegal drug use,' he says.
Additionally, he suggests that maintaining a detailed history of each cattle would allow for tracking administered medications, offering vital insights into the cause of the animal's death and helping to determine the appropriate disposal method.
Multi-pronged approach
In a significant move for vulture conservation, Tamil Nadu has restricted the use of the veterinary drug flunixin in 2019 and is working on establishing a Vulture Safe Zone across Coimbatore, Nilgiris, and Erode districts.
'While state governments lack the authority to impose a complete ban on pharmaceuticals, Tamil Nadu has taken decisive action by limiting the sale and purchase of the drug within its jurisdiction,' notes Bharathidasan. The state had earlier curbed the use of another harmful drug, ketoprofen, in 2015, well before the national government enforced a nationwide ban in 2023. 'At this stage, only ethical campaigning is possible. A nationwide ban issued by the Drugs Technical Advisory Board of India is essential to give it the force of law,' says Bharathidasan.
But, he says, bans on anti-inflammatory drugs alone will not help vultures recover. The problem requires a multipronged approach.
Rajkumar and his team are collecting field evidence and working with farmers, veterinarians, and wildlife departments to build awareness and demand accountability. Rajkumar notes that even among educated village residents, there is confusion about what vultures look like. 'Many think eagles are vultures because they've never seen a real vulture,' he says. When he visited schools, even teachers had never encountered one to teach the students.
'We show Ramayan's Jatayu to the villagers to save the vulture population. There is almost immediate attention to the issue when they can connect it with their belief system,' he shares. The team is also promoting ethno-veterinary practices, including traditional methods of animal treatment, such as the use of Ayurvedic medicines that they used before the introduction of the banned/restricted drugs. This is being piloted in five villages in Karnataka, he adds.
Additionally, Bharathidasan feels the government should establish a proper animal carcass disposal mechanism. He points to the growing issue of animal poisoning, where wild animals or birds unintentionally consume substances intended for peacocks, street dogs, and similar animals. These poisoned wild animals are then eaten by scavengers, triggering a chain of poisoning resulting in the death of vultures, which in turn increases the burden of carcass disposal.
'Vultures are nature's clean-up crew. Their absence forces communities to dispose of dead cattle at high cost, or worse, send carcasses to meat industries, exposing other animals and humans to contamination,' he says. Conserving vultures, he notes, is not just about saving one species; it plays a critical role in sustaining the entire scavenger chain.
Despite their critical ecological role, vultures reproduce slowly, with pairs breeding once a year and taking up to four years to mature. 'With other threats like electrocution, windmill collisions, animal poisoning, and food scarcity due to industrial meat practices, every vulture lost is a significant blow,' says Bharathidasan.