En voie de disparition, 2005

Shank Arte  

The vulture population in India has plummeted by 99.9%. This decline is accompanied by an increase in human deaths from rabies and diseases transmitted by rats and feral dogs.

Estimates suggest there are around 32,000 birds, compared to 40 million in the early 1990s. The fall is staggering: a 99.9% decrease is the fastest decline ever recorded in the world.

A massacre caused by Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug given to cows starting in 1994, proved fatal to scavengers that ingested it through carcasses. Banned in 2006, the damage was done and compounded by another tragedy: human deaths, precisely because of the disappearance of vultures.

A study last year established 104,000 additional deaths each year between 2000 and 2005, therefore more than 500,000 additional deaths, a total increase of 4%.

Vultures are major players in hygiene, a true sanitation service. Take a cow carcass; in less than an hour, only the bones remain thanks to the vultures—it's perfectly clean.

The populations of rats and feral dogs are increasing in parallel with the plummeting numbers of vultures. They clean carcasses much less effectively, leaving some flesh behind. As a result, water is contaminated with typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery. Furthermore, dogs bite and transmit rabies.

In India, deaths linked to the disappearance of vultures have also cost the state $70 million per year.

In the 2005 photo, the vulture is alone and blurry, as if announcing an ongoing disappearance.

Film photograph (therefore unmanipulated) and shot with a Pentax Z10