Is Decline in India’s Vulture Population Linked to Spread of Rabies in Humans?
India’s ecosystem has been dramatically disrupted by the plummeting population of its critically endangered vultures: Stray dogs have now become one of the top scavengers, and they are reportedly spreading rabies to humans at an alarming rate.
The new availability of extra food left behind by the dwindling number of vultures (from 40 million to just 60,000 vultures, due to poisoning) is a having a catastrophic effect on India’s ecosystem. It has led to a population explosion in stray dogs, who are reportedly “hunting in packs, thus posing a threat to humans as well as wildlife.”
Other scavengers have moved in and taken advantage of the newly available food. But these interlopers – stray dogs and rats, among others – aren’t as effective as the vultures. What’s more, they bring with them disease … As the number of vultures declines, the number of feral dogs in India has risen dramatically, thanks to the extra food available … Diseases such as rabies are on the increase: India now has the highest rate of human rabies in the world, partly due to the increase in feral dogs.
In fact, the rabies problem is so widespread that India has launched a plan to sterilize over 8 million dogs over the next ten years.
More human health issues related to the lack of vultures
Unlike vultures, who pick the carcass of a dead cow clean in an hour and leave nothing but a pile of bones drying in the sun, dogs are much less efficient at carcass disposal.
