under the fire star

Has Mysterious Killer of India's Vultures Been Found?

I've been reading for several years about the decline of India's vulture population, and its consequences:

...over the last decade, populations of the Oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis), long-billed vulture (Gyps indicus), and slender-billed vulture (Gyps tenuirostris) have declined by more than 95 percent in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Now, [animal] carcasses rot for days, raising quite a stink throughout the region.

"Any time you have an animal die of disease and its carcass sits around, it's a problem," said Oaks. For example, in India, the rotting carrion supports booming populations of feral dogs, which in turn spread rabies.

Additionally, vultures play an integral part of the Parsi "sky burial" ceremony in which human corpses are left out to be consumed by the raptors. The lack of vultures in places like Mumbai (known earlier as Bombay) is causing significant problems for this ancient tradition, said Oaks.

I had read that Parsis were even attempting to breed vultures in captivity. Now, according to several articles, scientists have discovered the reason:

...The culprit appears to be a drug akin to aspirin and ibuprofen.

In a study that sheds light on a decade-old mystery, Oaks, a veterinary microbiologist at Washington State University in Pullman, and colleagues link the vulture deaths to the recent and widespread use of diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that has become a popular treatment for ailing livestock throughout the Indian subcontinent.

The New York Times adds

... the devastation of vulture populations was the first clear case of major ecological damage caused by a pharmaceutical product.

There has been growing concern among scientists and environmentalists about the "vast amount of drugs that end up in the environment one way or another," [Dr. Oakes] said, but no effect of this magnitude.

A study in 2002 by the United States Geological Survey found traces of many different pharmaceuticals and "personal care products" — including steroids, insect repellents and many others — in the American water supply. The effect of these traces is unknown, but the concern is about the unexpected. One laboratory study suggested, for example, that antidepressants like Prozac could trigger spawning in some shellfish...