The grim forewarnings of a global study on birds

The State of the World’s Birds, an annual review of environmental resources published on May 5 by nine natural sciences and avian specialists across the globe, has revealed that the population of 48% of the 10,994 surviving species of birds is declining.

What are the key findings of the study?

• Data-The study found that 5,245 or about 48% of the existing bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population declines. While 4,295 or 39% of the species have stable trends, about 7% or 778 species have increasing population trends. The trend of 37 species was unknown.
• Threatened bird species-The bird species are non­randomly threatened across the avian tree of life, with richness of threatened species disproportionately high among families such as parrots, pheasants and allies, albatrosses and allies, rails, cranes, cracids, grebes, megapodes, and pigeons.
• Geographically region- The more threatened bird species (86.4%) are found in tropical than in temperate latitudes (31.7%), with hotspots for threatened species concentrated in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands.