INTEGRATED MAINS AND PRELIMS MENTORSHIP (IMPM) 2025 Daily KEY
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Vultures and Pandemics and Census and its Significance and its significance for the UPSC Exam? Why are topics like Cubit, Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) , Total Fertility Rate (TFR) at 2.0, CHINA-PAKISTAN Economic Corridor (CPEC) important for both preliminary and main exams? Discover more insights in the UPSC Exam Notes for September 12, 2025 |
For Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international Significance
For Mains Examination: GS III - Environment and Ecology
Context:
When most of us think of pandemic preparedness, images of vaccines, laboratories, and health workers in protective gear spring to mind. Rarely do we picture a bird, wings outstretched, circling high in the sky. Yet, one of South Asia’s guardians of public health is the vulture, nature’s most efficient waste manager.
Read about:
What are Vultures?
Relation between Vultures and Pandemics
Key takeaways:
- For centuries, vultures have served as natural cleaners, disposing of carcasses and curbing the spread of dangerous pathogens such as anthrax, rabies, and Clostridium botulinum. Until the 1980s, it was common to see large gatherings of vultures at dumping grounds.
- India alone had a population exceeding 40 million, but since the 1990s their numbers have plummeted by over 95% because of the use of diclofenac.
- This crisis is not merely ecological—it is also a growing public health concern, showing how biodiversity loss can amplify the risk of future pandemics.
- India’s vultures form an essential part of the Central Asian Flyway (CAF), a major migratory route that links Central Asian breeding habitats to wintering sites across South Asia. This flyway, stretching across 30+ countries, is used by millions of migratory birds each year.
- As vultures and raptors traverse this corridor, they connect ecosystems—and the potential transmission of diseases—across international borders. Sites like landfills, carcass dumps, or temporary stopovers can easily become disease hotspots, making the CAF not just a biodiversity highway but also a corridor of public health importance.
- Strengthening conservation within this pathway provides a crucial chance to integrate ecological security with pandemic prevention.
- Yet, regional collaboration faces hurdles due to funding shortages and weak structural support. Vulture conservation programmes remain under-resourced, fragmented, and insufficiently tied into national One Health frameworks.
- Meanwhile, persistent threats such as poisoning from toxic veterinary drugs and electrocution from power lines continue to undermine recovery efforts
- Vultures are directly linked to pandemic risks because of the ecological role they play in controlling disease spread. These birds are highly efficient scavengers that consume animal carcasses rapidly, leaving little opportunity for pathogens to multiply and spread in the environment.
- In their absence, dead animals remain exposed for longer periods, attracting stray dogs, rats, and other scavengers that are far more likely to transmit diseases to humans. For instance, with the decline of vultures in India due to the veterinary drug diclofenac, there was a noticeable rise in feral dog populations feeding on carcasses. This led to an increase in dog bites and rabies cases, showing how biodiversity loss can create new public health challenges.
- Moreover, vultures are part of the Central Asian Flyway, a major migratory corridor linking over 30 countries. Their movement, and that of other raptors, connects ecosystems across borders.
- If vultures decline, carcasses left unmanaged along this corridor can become hotspots for zoonotic spillovers—where pathogens jump from animals to humans. This is especially critical because many pandemics, including COVID-19, have zoonotic origins.
- Therefore, conserving vultures is not only about protecting a species but also about maintaining a natural barrier against disease outbreaks, highlighting the strong intersection between biodiversity conservation and global health security
Follow Up Question
1.Vultures which used to be very common in Indian countryside some years ago are ra