This is a 99% Invisible Bonus episode.

I'm Roman Mars.

Recently, we published an episode called Towers of Silence.

It's about how the Parses in India are grappling with the loss of vultures

and how it changed something very intimate and meaningful for the community.

It was reported by our own Lashmedan, and it is epic, it is beautiful. So first of all,

go listen to that story if you haven't heard it. It's so good. It's so worth your time. On the one

hand, it's a very specific story. It's about a unique set of circumstances that happen to a very

specific community, but it also feels universally relevant because it's a story about

death and how we choose to transition out of this world. It's about how we might react when

there's a major cultural shift that we cannot control. And importantly, it is about a keystone

species collapse, which is something that we are on track to see more of in these times.

And you, Lasha, collected a ton of information about vulture conservation in your reporting,

and it didn't quite fit into the story that we wanted to tell, but it is so vital and so interesting

that I wanted to have you on to talk more about that stuff specifically.

So where we left off in the episode, there's this hope that the vultures might one day return to the wild in huge numbers. So I want to start there. What is the deal with vultures

in India, both in the wild and in captivity in present day 2024? Yes. Hi, Roman. Yeah. There's, there's a lot in here.

And there's, you know, a lot that didn't quite fit into the main episode that I'm excited to talk about.

Yeah. Specifically about all the other ways that humans relate to vultures

and all the kind of nerdy stuff about vulture conservation happening right now. So there were

three different species that experienced a dramatic decline between 95 to 99%. Today, there are

eight vulture conservation and breeding centers in India, and there are a total of about 800 vultures in captivity.

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