Poisoning is the greatest extinction risk facing vultures, and impacts 88 per cent of threatened vulture species, researchers from University of Utah in the US said.
In many continents, vultures are the unfortunate victims of poisoned carcasses - especially impactful because dozens - or even hundreds - of vultures can feast on a single carcass, they said.
Populations of most vulture species around the world are now either declining or on the brink of extinction.
They examined factors affecting the extinction risk of more than 100 bird species, including 22 species of vultures, which eat carrion exclusively, and other scavenging birds that have broader diets.
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The results suggest several inherent ecological traits that likely contribute to vultures' extinction risk, including their large body masses, slow reproductive rates and highly specialised diets, researchers said.
In the mid-1990s India experienced a precipitous vulture decline, with more than 95 per cent of vultures disappearing by the early 2000s, they said.
The cause was eventually traced to diclofenac, a veterinary anti-inflammatory drug that relieved pain in cattle, but proved highly toxic to vultures, researchers said.
Hundreds of vultures would flock to each cattle carcass. And if the cattle had recently been treated with diclofenac, hundreds of vultures would die, they said.
Because of this highly gregarious feeding behaviour, less than one per cent of cattle carcasses contaminated with diclofenac could account for the steep vulture decline.
The increase in dogs, potentially feeding on disease-ridden carcasses, is thought to have at least partially caused the rabies outbreak that was estimated to have killed 48,000 people from 1992-2006 in India - deaths that may have been avoided if not for the disappearance of vultures, researchers said.
Now, the centre of the vulture crisis is in sub-Saharan Africa, they said.
"In Africa, it is a lot more challenging. It is a darker story," said Buechley.
The findings were published in the journal Biological Conservation.