Before the recent species collapse, vultures were a vital part of India's sanitation, cleaning carcasses and, as here, scavenging human remains left at the burning ghats on the banks of rivers. (adam woolfi tt / corbis). White-backed vultures were once the most common raptor on the Indian subcontinent. In the last fifteen years, their numbers have dropped from thirty million to eleven thousand—the result of ingesting diclofenac, a mild painkiller administered to cattle, that causes kidney failure in vultures.
