ASEAN Secretary-General Mihn: Call for Plan to Save Southeast Asia's Vultures

There is a crisis in the vulture population in Southeast Asia right now. A drug used to treat cattle, diclofenac, introduced in 1994, causes renal failure in vultures that consume the animal as carrion. This has caused an extreme decline of vultures in India and Southeast Asia. Once numbering over 40 million and nine species, the vulture population now totals around 100 000 with three of the nine species critically endangered.

Vultures are a key species in keeping ecosystems healthy. With the decline of vultures, problems of cleanliness and disease have become a major issue. Vultures are carrion eaters: they consume carcasses and keep them from rotting and spreading disease. Due to the high number of bodies that are dumped into the Ganges everyday, the threat of disease, as well as the sheer repulsion of excessive dead bodies, is higher.

There is still hope. Many conservationists are working on breeding programs to conserve the vulture population and bans of diclofenac have come into place. If the Association of Southeast Asian Nations develops and follows through on a plan to completely eliminate diclofenac from their nations, the breeding programs have a chance at renewing, slowly, the vulture populations in India and the rest of Southeast Asia.

Sign today to give a voice to these vital and critically-endangered animals. By signing today you are showing care for the essential carrion of Southeast Asia.