by New Delhi — Scientists say half a million people were inadvertently killed and huge economic losses incurred by Indian farmers when Indian farmers managed to anesthetize their cattle in the 1990s – not because of any harm to the cattle, but because millions were lost vultures. , scavengers who historically ate animal remains before they could decompose and become vectors for disease.
In the early 1990s, the patent for a painkiller called diclofenac lifted, making it cheap and widely available to India’s vast agricultural sector. Farmers use it to treat a wide variety of conditions in cattle. But even a small amount of the drug is fatal for vultures. Since the beginning of its widespread use in India, the domestic vulture population has fallen from 50 million to just a few thousand – and according to a study published by the American Economic Association, the impact on people is significant, which shows the vital. role played by the scavengers.
Vultures have been a vital part of India’s ecosystems for centuries. According to the authors of the study, titled “The Social Cost of Stepping Stone Species: Evidence from the Decline of Vultures in India,” the large native birds are a “keystone species” — one that plays an irreplaceable role in an ecosystem.
Only scavengers feed entirely on carcasses, and they do so very efficiently, consuming the remains quickly and leaving behind much to spread disease. The authors of the study say that India’s vultures would have eaten at least 50 million animal carcasses every year, before their population was wiped out.
In doing so, they prevented the dead farm animals from rotting, and the deadly bacteria and other pathogens that thrive in carcasses from being transmitted to human populations.
“In a country like India where eating beef is banned, most of the cattle are carcasses,” Anant Sudarshan, an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England, who co-authored the study, told CBS News. “Vultures provide an incredible disposal service for free. … It takes a group of vultures about 45 minutes to turn a cow carcass into a bone.”
The vultures’ appetites also helped keep the populations of competing scavengers in check, such as wild dogs and rats, which can transmit rabies and many other diseases.
In 1994, farmers started giving diclofenac to their cattle and other livestock. The drug caused kidney failure and death in vultures that feed on the carcasses of the animals due to the painkiller, and the bird’s population declined from 50 million to just 20,000 in the following decade alone .
Without the vultures around to do the job, farmers began disposing of their dead livestock in local water bodies, leading to water pollution – and another way for pathogens to reach humans.
Sudarshan and study co-author Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, examined the impact of the severely reduced vulture population on human health by mapping vulture habitats with health data from more than 600 areas in the India. They said their research shows that 100,000 human deaths each year between 2000 and 2005 could be linked to the declining vulture populations.
It also shows economic losses that they estimate at $69 billion per year, mainly related to premature human deaths due to the collapse of the scavenger population.
According to their research these deaths were caused by the spread of diseases that would have decimated a thriving vulture population. Stray dog populations increased, and with them, the spread of rabies, also during the time frame, as did the amount of bacteria measured in many local water sources.
“India is the biggest center of it rabies around the world, as the deer dog population has increased dramatically,” Sudarshan told CBS News.
Without a big vulture rebound, the authors of the study said the spread of the disease and death as a result only in the coming years, as well as the costs of health care.
India banned diclofenac for veterinary use in 2006, but Sudarshan said the ban needs to be implemented much more effectively. He and Eyal called for more conservation funding to boost vulture populations, but warned that even if the Indian government makes a big effort, it will take at least a decade for the species to bounce back as far as it needs to because on them. ‘slow re-producers.’
As an alternative to bringing back the vultures, Sudarshan said India could build a network of incinerators across the country, but that would cost an estimated $1 billion a year, and would use a huge amount of energy. and that they would cause significant air pollution, which is already a major problem for India.
“Therefore, it makes more sense to bring back the natural way of dealing with the millions of animal carcasses that India produces every year,” he said.
And he said that the work must begin urgently, because “the vultures started dying in the 1990s. India has done nothing three decades later.”
The government spends about $3 million per year to save India’s native tigers. Sudarshan said that while vultures may be much less of a tourist attraction, there is a broader question about “the basis of our conservation policy.”
“Our paper shows that the cost of losing them [vultures] about $69000000000 per year, which is much higher than any benefits that the tiger brings”, he said, adding: “We have to think from the point of view of cost effectiveness and growth perspective, how should we choose species to preserve?”
“Understanding the role that vultures play in human health shows the importance of wildlife protection – and not just the cute and cuddly,” said co-author, Frank. “They all have a job to do in our ecosystems that affect our lives.”
Harris campaign releases video showing Trump’s mug shot
Park Fire increases in California, Jasper overtakes Canada
Can Harris maintain momentum through the 2024 election?
