Basically Half of All Known Bird Species Are Grappling With Population Declines

Tue, 31 May 2022 18:17:58 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://www.sciencealert.com/nearly-half-of-all-known-birds-worldwide-are-undergoing-population-declines>

"Thousands of wild bird species are growing ill or dying from habitat loss,
climate change, and overexploitation, according to new research.

A new estimate from researchers around the world has found 48 percent of living
bird species are known or suspected to have declining populations.

That's more than 5,000 species that face a risky future. Among the species
surveyed, only 6 percent showed increases in population.

"We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions of
continentally distributed bird species," says conservation biologist Alexander
Lees from Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, and also at the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology.

"Avian diversity peaks globally in the tropics and it is there that we also
find the highest number of threatened species."

The appalling results come from some of the same team who, in 2019, calculated
nearly 3 billion breeding birds had been lost in Northern America since the
1970s.

In 2021, another study determined that millions of birds had vanished in Europe
in the past 40 years.

The recent estimates suggest similar patterns exist right across the planet,
but especially in tropical, polar, and montane birds.

Without transformative action, thousands of avian species around the world are
at risk of endangerment or even extinction."

Via Rixty Dixet.

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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