It is a medium-sized vulture with a small, semi-bald head with little feathers, long beak, and wide dark colored wings.

[5][6][7] The range of the Indian vulture extended from southeastern Pakistan to south India and to Indochina and the northern Malay Peninsula in the east.

[6][8] It is also found in various land-forms ranging from semi-desert to dry foot hills, open fields and cultivable lands near villages, near garbage dumps and slaughter houses in urban areas.

[12] The Indian vulture is a keystone species in its habitats and is a scavenging bird, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals.

[16] It covers wide areas sometimes ranging hundreds of miles in search of carcasses and mainly uses its eye sight to spot the same.

[23] The species is classified as critically endangered in the IUCN Red List since 2002 due to the rapid decline in population.

[15] Data modelling revealed that a tiny proportion (about 0.8%) of livestock carcasses containing diclofenac can cause significant crash in vulture populations.

[22] The decline in vulture population had a huge socio-economic impact in the region and drastically affected the conservation of the ecological balance.

By removing all carrion, vultures had helped decrease pollution, spread of diseases, and suppressed undesirable mammalian scavengers.

[25] Without vultures, a large number of animal carcasses were left to rot, posing a serious risk to human health by contaminating water supply and providing a potential breeding ground for infectious germs and proliferation of pests such as rats.

[26] The loss of vultures also resulted in a substantial increase in the population of feral dogs, whose bites are the most common cause of human rabies.

[15] On average, it was estimated that human mortality rates increased by more than 4% during the period of 2000 to 2005, when vulture population reached the lowest levels.

[29] Pharmaceutical companies were encouraged to the increase in the production of meloxicam aimed at reducing the cost down to diclofenac's own levels to make it more suitable for use.

[15] Later surveys found that the population was recovering slowly and the decline has been significantly slowed in India, Pakistan and Nepal following a strict ban on the drug.

In 2014, Saving Asia's Vultures from Extinction programme was announced to start releasing captive-bred birds into the wild by 2016.

[37] Three more breeding centers have been setup in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Madhya Pradesh in addition to four smaller facilities in collaboration with zoos.

[22] In 2020, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of Government of India has launched a Vulture Action Plan 2020-25.

It aims to step up conservation measures and set up a mechanism to ensure that toxic drugs other than diclofenac are also banned for veterinary use.

[38] Indian vultures are often misunderstood, feared and considered as lowly creatures largely due to their eating habits of feeding on carrion.