Twenty years ago, South Asia’s vultures were disappearing faster than almost any bird in recorded history. Today, after one of the most coordinated wildlife rescues ever attempted, their populations have stabilized — and in some places are climbing back. The turnaround traces directly to a drug ban, a network of conservation partners, and decades of patient, evidence-driven work.
At a glance
- Vulture population crash: Research by the Bombay Natural History Society found that White-rumped Vulture numbers dropped by 99.9% across northern India in little over a decade — the steepest decline of any formerly abundant bird species in the world.
- Diclofenac ban: In 2006 C.E., India, Pakistan, and Nepal banned the manufacture and importation of veterinary diclofenac — the anti-inflammatory drug that was killing vultures through kidney failure after they scavenged treated livestock carcasses.
- Vulture Safe Zones: In 2021 C.E., Nepal declared the world’s first fully verified Vulture Safe Zone, with surveys confirming veterinary diclofenac had been reduced to zero and tracking data showing high bird survival rates.
How a common drug nearly ended three species
The scale of the crisis was staggering, and its cause was not immediately clear. Researchers tested vulture carcasses for pesticides, herbicides, and toxic heavy metals — but found nothing conclusive. The breakthrough came in 2003 C.E., when The Peregrine Fund, working with the Ornithological Society of Pakistan, traced the deaths to diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that had become widely used to treat cattle. Vultures scavenging carcasses of treated animals were suffering kidney failure and dying.
Teams from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and Bird Conservation Nepal, supported by the RSPB, confirmed the same mechanism was at work in India and Nepal. The drug was not only lethal to vultures — it was everywhere in the food chain.
Once the cause was identified, researchers moved quickly to find a safe alternative. Meloxicam was identified as vulture-safe, and by 2006 C.E., India, Pakistan, and Nepal had banned veterinary diclofenac outright. Andy Evans, Head of Global Species Recovery at the RSPB, called the cooperative effort across NGOs and governments over 30 years “one of the biggest conservation efforts” ever mounted for wildlife in the region — one that brought three iconic species back from the edge.
Closing the loopholes
Banning a drug and eliminating it from the landscape are two different things. Human-formulation diclofenac — chemically identical to the veterinary version but not subject to the ban — was still being used by vets and farmers. Large, multi-dose vials made the drug cheap and accessible.
India addressed this in 2015 C.E. by banning multi-dose vials, cutting off the main source of illegal veterinary use. The government has since banned additional toxic drugs — ketoprofen, aceclofenac, and nimesulide — after testing confirmed they posed the same risk to vultures. Two other drugs, tolfenamic acid and meloxicam, have been verified as safe, giving livestock owners real alternatives. Meloxicam has now become the treatment of choice for cattle across much of the region.
Conservation advocates are now pushing for a pre-licensing toxicity testing system, so that every new veterinary drug is screened for vulture safety before it reaches the market.
From breeding centres to safe release zones
In the early 2000s C.E., the situation looked dire enough that conservationists established captive breeding centres as a safety net. None of the three most threatened species — White-rumped, Indian, and Slender-billed Vultures — had ever been bred in captivity. BNHS, with advice from the International Centre for Birds of Prey, succeeded in producing the first chicks. Funding came initially from the UK Government’s Darwin Initiative, and has since shifted largely to Indian state forest departments in Haryana, West Bengal, Assam, and Madhya Pradesh, along with the central government.
By 2023 C.E., Nepal’s Vulture Breeding Centre released its final birds back into the wild — a milestone that reflected genuine recovery in wild populations. That same year marked two decades since the drug that nearly ended these species was first identified.
The Vulture Safe Zone model has become central to long-term recovery. Each zone covers a 100-mile radius around a nesting colony or planned release site, and aims to eliminate toxic veterinary drugs through advocacy, drug monitoring, and the promotion of safe alternatives. In 2021 C.E., Nepal’s first zone was declared fully safe — confirmed by pharmacy surveys showing zero diclofenac presence and GPS tracking showing high survival among wild birds. A second Nepalese zone is now in development, with Darwin Initiative funding secured in 2025 C.E. by Bird Conservation Nepal, Renewable World, and the RSPB. In Assam, India, the country’s first Vulture Safe Zone is on track to be formally declared.
This story fits into a broader pattern of species recovery and rewilding successes worldwide — where targeted, science-led action has reversed declines that once seemed irreversible.
The road ahead
The results so far are real but uneven. In Nepal, vulture numbers have shown a rapid, if partial, increase. In India — home to a large share of Asia’s total vulture population — numbers have stabilized, though at a level far below historical baselines. Stabilization is not the same as recovery, and the work is not finished.
The most serious remaining threat is the continued manufacture and distribution of large multi-dose diclofenac vials by some Indian companies. If that loophole isn’t closed, it risks unraveling two decades of progress. BNHS and its partners continue to press for enforcement, while the SAVE consortium — Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction, formed in 2011 C.E. with partners across India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Myanmar — coordinates science, advocacy, and monitoring across the region.
What has already been achieved is remarkable. Three species that were plummeting toward extinction have been pulled back. The skies above South Asia are not yet what they once were, but vultures are still in them — and the number is growing.
Read more
For more on this story, see: RSPB — Spotlight on Asia’s vultures twenty years after game-changing drug ban
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- How China’s milu deer came back from extinction
- 26 Australian species are no longer threatened
- The Good News for Humankind archive on wildlife conservation
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