My thoughts have been occupied with the fate of certain vultures (real ones), so it is not surprising that the term came to mind when I read about the latest Supreme Court Decision today siding with (or acting as) proverbial ones, allowing developers and land owners to build and pollute in previously protected wetlands. Overall, the Sackett vs EPA decision gutted the Clean Water Act, a key 50-year-old piece of legislation to prevent pollution seeping into rivers, streams and lakes. The ruling undermines the EPA’s authority (a long term goal of those fighting the “administrative state”) and was disastrous enough that even justice Kavanaugh dissented. This comes of course on the heels of another ruling last year which curtailed the EPA’s ability to regulate planet-heating gases from the energy sector. Any hope to force industries to minimally fight climate change was scuttled.

Of course I was looking at a vulture, when vulture thoughts emerged – the original thoughts not much happier than the ones following the SC news. As it turns out, some 90% of India’s population of vultures was wiped out across the last two decades. These birds play an enormous role in the health of that continent, because they devour rotten carcasses that otherwise spread disease to human populations. In fact, they were a means of picking corpses clean, human corpses who can’t be cremated or buried according to Zoroastrian religion. “Zoroastrians put their dead on top of a structure called The Tower of Silence where vultures devour the body in a matter of hours. It’s clean, efficient, eco-friendly. It’s how it’s been for thousands of years.” (I learned all this here.)

Scientists have been sleuthing for years and finally figured it out: the vultures died from kidney failure! But what caused that in all of these birds? Here’s the short version: it’s not a virus, bacteria or fungi, it not’s malnutrition or environmental toxins. It is the unintended consequence of human caring about – cows. They are holy to Hindus, and when they get old and suffer arthritic pain, they are given pain killers, the drug Diclofenac in particular. It’s in a class of drugs called NSAIDs, Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs. That includes, you know, drugs like Advil, Motrin, Aleve, ibuprofen (which are of course also injuring kidneys in humans, if not taken appropriately.) The vultures eat the medicated cows’ carcasses, taking the drug in that way and it absolutely destroys their organs.

Here is the good news: once scientists had established the connection, the drug was abandoned across Asia (and replaced with other pain killers for cows,) and the vulture populations are slowly recovering. Emphasis on s l o w l y: they have only one offspring per year….

The vulture I saw was likely waiting to get a taste of Heuer, not all unlikely given the company I found myself in. Then again, it might have been rabbit for lunch.

I was walking for the first time this year on the Oak Island loop on Sauvie Island, which ended up not being a loop after all, since a quarter of it was completely submerged in water, forcing me to turn back the way I had come.

But the views were restorative, as always, birds happily courting or feeding their young.

A bald eagle hanging out, let me come surprisingly close while looking me straight in the eye from a position on the ground, no less; I later saw him flying away, maybe the starlings had gotten on his nerve.

Ospreys coming and going from their nest.

Almost enough joy to forget about black robed judges potentially bought by special interests, now delivering the spoils, environmental protection be damned. I better go find some more birds….

Quail on the run.

Time to re-up one of my go-to spring albums, Simmerdim.