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NEW DELHI, India (AP) - More than 90 percent of India's vultures, a crucial link in the environment, have died and the government is working to ban a drug blamed for the near-extinction, officials said Tuesday.
A. Raja, the minister for environment and forests, also said at an international conference on vultures that officials would soon begin a nationwide census of the birds to assess how many are left, the government's Press Information Bureau reported.
Over the past 15 years, millions of oriental white-backed, long-billed and slender-billed vultures in South Asia have died from eating cattle carcasses tainted by diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory and painkiller given to sick cows, experts say.
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