Vultures Population Decline

In seventies, while living in a village in vicinity of a forest near Hyderabad, Pakistan, I remember that vultures (White-backed) used to be abundantly available, as whenever any dead animal carcass was placed outside our village, in a moment of time hundreds of vultures would circle around the sky and land over the dead animal to scavenge on it. In a day or two the entire carcass would be eaten by vultures and dogs, both competing for a greater pie. Now days, the situation has entirely changed. The animal carcasses thrown outside the village keep lying there without any trace of vultures coming down to scavenge on it. The recent research on decline in vultures population in Indian subcontinent has revealed that the use of Diclofenac drugs for livestock treatment is one of the major causes of their population decline.