In this thought-provoking episode of The Think Wildlife Podcast, host Anish Banerjee is joined by Nitish Agrawal, founder of The Last Vulture, to unpack one of the most urgent yet overlooked stories in Indian biodiversity: the vulture crisis and its far-reaching ecological and public health consequences.

Vultures are keystone species and irreplaceable scavengers, playing a critical role in maintaining ecosystem balance by rapidly removing animal carcasses from the landscape. Nitish explains how the catastrophic collapse of vulture populations across India triggered an ecological crisis with cascading impacts on public health, feral dog populations, disease transmission, and rural livelihoods. Once abundant across biodiversity hotspots of the subcontinent, vultures have declined by over 95 percent in many regions, making the vulture crisis one of the fastest population crashes of any bird group in history.

The conversation explores vulture conservation not only as a species-focused intervention, but as a lens to understand biodiversity management and systemic failure. Nitish highlights how pharmaceutical contamination, policy blind spots, and lack of public awareness accelerated this biodiversity crisis, while also reflecting on why vultures suffer from a severe cultural stigma despite their ecological importance. Through the idea of “vulture culture,” he argues that conservation success depends on reshaping how society perceives scavengers, death, and ecosystem services.

A major focus of the episode is vulture rewilding and rethinking rewilding more broadly in human-dominated landscapes. Nitish discusses how and community-based conservation are essential for restoring vulture populations, particularly around carcass availability, safe food zones, and coexistence with pastoral communities. These efforts demonstrate how biodiversity conservation can succeed when local people are active partners rather than passive stakeholders.

The episode also delves into innovative approaches linking conservation with livelihoods, including safaris, walking safaris, and low-impact conservation tourism. Nitish explains how sustainable tourism, biodiversity tourism, and ethical wildlife experiences can create economic incentives for protecting threatened species while deepening public engagement with Indian biodiversity. Rather than spectacle-driven wildlife tourism, these models emphasize learning, interpretation, and long-term stewardship.

This conversation offers a powerful reminder that saving vultures is about far more than birds alone. It is about restoring ecological function, safeguarding public health, addressing the biodiversity crisis, and reimagining how conservation, culture, and communities intersect in modern India. Essential listening for anyone interested in vulture conservation, rewilding, biodiversity hotspots, and the future of conservation tourism in India.

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