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Europa Press photography
Stunning declines are occurring in bird populations around the world, warn scientists from several institutions in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Loss and degradation of natural habitats and direct overexploitation of many species are cited as key threats to avian biodiversity. Climate change is identified as an emerging driver of bird population declines.
“We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally distributed bird species,” says lead author Alexander Lees, Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK and also a research associate. at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. “Bird diversity is highest globally in the tropics and it is there that where we also find the greatest number of threatened species”.
The study says that it is known or suspected that approximately 48% of bird species< /strong>existing around the world are experiencing population decline. Populations are stable for 39% of the species. Only 6% show increasing population trends, and the status of 7% is still unknown. The study authors reviewed changes in avian biodiversity using “Red List” data. by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to reveal population changes among the world’s 11,000 bird species.
The findings mirror the results of a pivotal 2019 study that determined Almost 3 billion breeding birds have been lost over the last 50 years in the United States and Canada. The lead author of that study is also an author of this global status report.
“After documenting the loss of nearly 3 billion birdsIn North America alone, it was disheartening to see the same patterns of population decline and extinction around the world,” says now-retired Cornell Laboratory conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg. “Because birds are highly visible and sensitive indicators of environmental health, we know that their loss indicates a much larger loss of biodiversity and threats to human health and well-being.”
Despite their findings, the study authors say there is hope for bird conservation efforts, but transformational change is needed.
“The fate of populations of birds depends largely on stopping the loss and degradation of habitats”,Lee says. “That is often driven by the demand for resources. We need to better consider how commodity flows may contribute to biodiversity loss and try to reduce the human footprint on the natural world.”
“Fortunately, the global network of bird conservation organizations participating in this study have the tools to prevent further loss of bird species and abundance,” adds Rosenberg. “From the protection of the earth to policies that support the sustainable use of resources, everything depends on the will of governments and society to coexist with nature on our shared planet.”
Information is key, and the study authors point out that the growth of public participation in bird monitoring and the advent of easy-to-use tools such as the database eBird data from the Cornell Lab make studies of breeding birds, distribution atlases, and continental-scale abundance models possible and help inform conservation efforts.