Vultures in South Asia have been dying from eating livestock carcasses tainted with veterinary drugs

Vultures in South Asia have been dying from eating livestock carcasses tainted with diclofenac, a veterinary drug. Now researchers have found that a similar drug called ketoprofen is also fatal to the birds.

Both treatments fall into a category called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). While diclofenac is known to cause kidney failure and death in vultures, evidence of such effects had not been found for ketoprofen.

Researchers administered ketoprofen, both directly and through the carcasses of ketoprofen-treated cattle, to Cape griffon vultures (Gyps coprotheres) and African white-backed vultures (Gyps africanus). One bird given 1.5 milligrams of ketoprofen per kilogram of body weight died, and a dose of 5 milligrams per kilogram killed seven out of 11 vultures.

Wild vultures could be exposed to these ketoprofen levels if they eat carcasses of recently treated livestock, the authors say in Biology Letters. The birds that died of ketoprofen ingestion showed kidney failure symptoms similar to those of diclofenac-treated birds. The use of these drugs needs to be more heavily regulated, the team warns, or certain vulture species in Asia could go extinct.

http://journalwatch.conservationmagazine.org/2009/12/09/strike-two/

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Tens of millions of vultures played a key role in South Asian ecosystems before the introduction of diclofenac in the early 1990s. Now, populations of the three species of the critically endangered, griffon-type vultures are thought to have dropped by as much as 97 percent, according to Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

Vultures play a vital role in disposing of carcasses, keeping down populations of stray dogs and rats that also feed on dead cattle and can spread disease among humans.

"From millions of individuals in the 1980s, vultures have simply disappeared from large swaths of India, Pakistan and Nepal, and at least three species have been brought to the brink of extinction," said Richard Cuthbert, one of the study's authors and a scientist with the Royal Society.

"The rate of decline of these magnificent birds is staggering," he said. "For the oriental white-backed vultures, for every two birds alive last year, one will now be dead, and this is all because of the birds' inability to cope with these drugs in livestock carcasses, the birds' principal food source."

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