GRIFFON vultures are dying across India, apparently succumbing to a
mysterious illness. Wildlife experts are becoming increasingly concerned about
the viability of one species in particular. But for India’s ancient Parsee
religion the vultures’ decline poses a more practical problem. Parsees rely on
vultures to dispose of their dead, and the bodies are piling up.
At Bombay’s biggest Parsee funerary site—a high-walled enclosure open
to the sky where the dead are laid out—some corpses have lain uneaten for
three years, and the stench and possible spread of infection are becoming a
problem. The Parsees have called in Western…
