Empty pledges leave bird species at risk

Published on Sunday 21 September 2008 22:01

GOVERNMENT efforts have failed to halt the decline in bird species across the world, conservationists claim.

The population of once-common UK birds such as the cuckoo, turtle dove and nightingale are among those identified by Birdlife International as suffering – but species on every continent are at risk.

The international conservation organisation issued the warning at the launch of a new study State Of The World's Birds at their world conference in Buenos Aires.

The alliance is calling for more and better-targeted funding to ensure the survival of bird species and turn around increasing losses of biodiversity.

Birdlife's chief executive Dr Mike Rands said: "Birds provide an accurate and easy-to-read environmental barometer, allowing us to see clearly the pressures our current way of life is putting on the world's biodiversity."

James Reynolds, spokesman for RSPB Scotland, said a number of Scotland's indigenous breeds, particularly wading birds like curlew and lapwing, have suffered serious declines.

"This is largely due to changes in land use and agricultural practices," he said.

"But it is now apparent that climate change is also exerting greater pressure on the lives of birds in Scotland, including many of our internationally iconic seabird cities, bringing about changes in habitat and food availability that threaten to shrink their populations.

"It is crucial that we make extra efforts to ensure that those habitats are in the best possible condition, so giving the species that have thrived in them a better chance of coping."

While the world's governments have committed to halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010, a failure to back up pledges with often "relatively trivial" amounts of funding means the target looks set to be missed, Birdlife's report warned.

Birdlife said 153 species of bird had become extinct since 1500, with 18 species disappearing in the last quarter of the 20th century and three more known or expected to have become extinct since 2000. The rate of extinction is increasing, largely due to widespread destruction of habitat, and one in eight bird species is now threatened with extinction, the report said.

But Birdlife said conservation can work – with 16 species saved from extinction between 1994 and 2004.

More than 1,200 types of bird are now considered globally threatened, and 190 of them are critically endangered.

An analysis of 124 of Europe's common bird species over a 26-year period found almost half had declined across 20 countries.

Cuckoo numbers are down by 17 per cent , the turtle dove by almost two thirds and the grey partridge by 79 per cent.

Birds which migrate between Europe, the Middle East and Africa have also been affected.

Loss of habitat, pollution, agriculture, fishing and the impacts of climate change are all putting pressure on the world's birds.

Nature's 'Red List' is getting longer

THE 2008 International Union for Conservation's Nature Red List, which compiles those breeds of birds under threat of extinction, highlighted the seriousness of the issue earlier this year, with 1,226 species now threatened, and eight uplisted to Critically Endangered, the highest threat category.

Of the 26 species that changed category owing to changes in their population size, rate of decline or range size, 24 were uplisted to a higher level of threat.

These includespecies like Eurasian Curlew and Dartford Warbler (right), now regarded as Near Threatened.