Vultures are ugly, there are no two ways about it. But does that mean we should let them go extinct? Marcel Berlins, writing in the Guardian yesterday, suggested that it does. In India, vultures have declined catastrophically, by 99.9 per cent in 15 years. Their loss is affecting millions of people.
They are nature's best scavengers, picking clean roadside carcasses and reducing the chance of human disease. Bone collectors rely on the bones that remain for their livelihoods. The Parsi community uses vultures to dispose of their dead. Or at least they did. There are so few vultures now that none of these roles is being fulfilled. Feral dogs roam carcass dumps threatening public health; bone collectors, and leather tanners, are out of work; sky burials are no longer an option for Parsis.
We don't save endangered wildlife species by species, but in their hundreds or thousands by protecting their habitats and their health.
When we do that, we help ourselves. Rainforests host majestic tigers and nasty, unnamed creepy crawlies but also store carbon and water - helping combat climate change and preventing flooding - and clean that water for human use. Saving threatened wildlife is a big job but one that helps us too. Looking nice just doesn't come into it.
Read about the RSPB's work to save Asian vultures here