LONDON, May 19 (UPI) -- British researchers say Asian vultures are facing the possibility of extinction in the wild within a decade.
The study, led by the London Zoological Society, said urgent action is needed to eliminate the livestock drug that has caused the birds' catastrophic decline -- a decline has been quicker than that of any other wild bird, including the dodo.
The study shows the population of oriental white-backed vultures dropping by more than 40 percent every year in India, where it has plunged by 99.9 percent since 1992.
Researchers said numbers of long-billed and slender-billed vultures together have fallen by nearly 97 percent during the same period.
Conservationists say banning the retail sale of the veterinary drug diclofenac, known to cause kidney failure in vultures, and constructing more captive breeding centers is the only way to save the birds.
Scientists counted vultures in northern and central India between March and June 2007. They surveyed the birds from vehicles along more than 11,740 miles of roads.
Their study followed four previous counts, the last in 2003.
The research that found only a few hundred birds might still exist appears in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society.
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