DANGPLAT, Cambodia » A doubling of the vulture population in Cambodia is raising hopes that efforts to save the critically endangered bird in Asia may be paying off.

The number of vultures in the Southeast Asian nation has risen to 300 from as few as 150 in 2004.

Across Asia they have suffered one of the natural world’s greatest population crashes of recent times. Cambodia is the first country in the region to reverse their decline.

One reason: "vulture restaurants" where dead animals are laid out for vultures to eat.

Conservationists are also encouraged by a slowing of the decline in India. That followed a ban on a livestock painkiller that proved fatal to vultures. They died after eating the carcasses of animals treated with the drug.