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hatrack

(59,440 posts)
Wed Mar 26, 2014, 08:20 AM Mar 2014

Vet. Drug Diclofenic Wiped Out 95%+ Of S. Asian Vultures In Less Than 10 Years - EU Just Approved It

When Europeans first arrived in North America, they exterminated three to five billion passenger pigeons (Ectopistes migratorius) in the short span of a century through a combination of habitat destruction and hunting. In 1914, the last living passenger pigeon perished at the Cincinnati Zoo. Despite the staggering scale of this extinction event, three species of vulture from Southeastern Asia retain the dubious distinction of having had the most rapid population crash of any avian fauna. They might not have begun with numbers as large as the passenger pigeon, but within the space of a single decade, their populations were reduced by 96 to 99 percent.

The scientific world argued in vain over the cause of this dramatic decline, suspecting an undocumented, lethal, and highly infectious virus. When the mystery was finally solved in 2006—to nearly everybody's surprise—the cause was a single drug, diclofenac, often prescribed to subdue cattle. Subsequently, veterinarians were banned from prescribing it to farmers across the subcontinent. Despite these events and in the face of such evidence, the EU has just sanctioned diclofenac for use by veterinarians across the European Union. According to local conservation groups, European vultures could very well be the next victims of a massive extermination and extinction event.

"It is shocking," José Tavares, the Director of the Vulture Conservation Foundation, told Birdlife International, "that a drug that has already wiped out wildlife on a massive scale in Asia is now put on the market in crucial countries for vulture conservation such as Spain and Italy, especially as the total ban on Diclofenac in India has produced the first signs of recovery in Indian vultures."


The story of diclofenac's use in India, Nepal, and Pakistan is testament to the importance of ecological impact assessments for drugs prescribed by both doctors and veterinarians. Surveys of populations of white-rumped vultures (Gyps bengalensis) in India indicate a drop of 99.9 percent from 1991 to 2007, with corresponding reductions of 96.8 percent in the Indian vulture (Gyps indicus) and the slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) population sizes. In Nepal, although the reduction was less dramatic, nearly 75 percent of all white-rumped vultures died between 2002 and 2009. Today, the IUCN's Red List considers all three species to be Critically Endangered.


EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0325-watsa-europe-vultures.html

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Vet. Drug Diclofenic Wiped Out 95%+ Of S. Asian Vultures In Less Than 10 Years - EU Just Approved It (Original Post) hatrack Mar 2014 OP
What the hell? hunter Mar 2014 #1

hunter

(38,264 posts)
1. What the hell?
Wed Mar 26, 2014, 01:01 PM
Mar 2014

There are alternative drugs.

There's no reason to do this but that it's cheap.

If your livestock is cranky and irritable because they hurt, for gawds sake figure out why they are hurting.

But I guess it's easier to just give them drugs and ignore the ones who wander off to die and poison the vultures.

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