I am not often blown away by a paper in the American Economic Review, but genuinely gobsmacked here. The causal chain here is veterinary use of a painkiller that's toxic to vultures -> vulture populations collapse -> higher human mortality from unscavenged carcasses. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

99% Invisible had a really good episode on this issue a few months back 99percentinvisible.org/episode/towe...

Towers of Silence - 99% Invisible

Situated right near downtown Mumbai, India is an area of about 55 acres of dense, overgrown forest. In one of the most populous cities in the world, this is a place where peacocks roam freely — a spac...

The estimated cost ($70 billion a year!) could be high by a factor of 10 and I'd still be astonished.