Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Time 0:31:22
- The decline in India’s vulture population led to a rise in feral dogs and diseases like rabies.
- A study estimates half a million excess deaths in India from 2000-2005 due to the vulture decline. Transcript: Rachel Feltman And then that like rose to 1,200 as the vultures declined so that also led to an increase in rabies and yeah like all of this information has been out there and then in July a study came out That was like how much of an impact did this actually have so they looked at excess deaths in India from 2000 to 2005. And they did a bunch of work to, you know, sort of isolate all the variables. And they were looking at places that had never had a lot of vultures and still didn’t because now the vultures are gone versus places that had used to have a ton of vultures and now have Almost none because the vultures are gone, controlled for a bunch of other things that might have changed.
Time 0:32:06
- A study estimated that half a million excess deaths in India from 2000-2005 were linked to vulture population decline.
- This highlights the crucial role vultures play in the ecosystem and the significant human cost of their decline. Transcript: Rachel Feltman And they estimated that in those five years, half a million people had died because the vulture population had dropped 100,000 people every single year. And that was just because of all of these diseases becoming more common. And they were able to show that the purchase of rabies vaccines went up, but not enough to actually, you know, stop the spread of rabies. They showed that pathogen levels in the water supply went way up. So just all around, like, things got yuckier and a lot of people died because these vultures weren’t here to clean up the trash. And in places where, you know, they hadn’t historically had a bunch of vultures, things stayed pretty much the same. So yeah, and I think what was the coolest thing to me about this study is that outside experts were not surprised. They were like, we’ve been saying this. This is what we’ve been saying. Numbers seem about right. That is how important vultures are. And they were like, but nobody was like mad that this study happened. They were like, if people need to see the big flashing numbers to get that this is serious, it’s awesome that we have the big flashing numbers. But tons of people who study vultures and how they impact the ecosystem were like, yep, that is what we’ve been saying. And vultures are not as threatened now as they were a few years ago, but they’re still really not doing well. And they’re not going to fully recover in India specifically without a lot of investment in conservation and restoration. And there are people working on this, but there hasn’t been a bunch of, there hasn’t been much government buy-in to improving and increasing vulture populations. And I get it, right? Like they’re not the most charismatic animals. One article I read pointed out that the Indian government spends about 69 billion a year and kills loads of people.