The State of the World’s Birds, an annual review of environmental resources has revealed that the population of 48% of the 10,994 surviving species of birds is declining.

State of the World’s Birds

• The report is published by the Manchester Metropolitan University.
• It gives an overview of the changes in the knowledge of avian biodiversity and the extent to which it is imperilled.
• The study draws from BirdLife International’s latest assessment of all birds for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.

What are the key findings of the study?

• 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.
• It shows 1,481 or 13.5% species are currently threatened with global extinction.

Where the birds are threatened the most?

• The more threatened bird species (86.4%) are found in tropical than in temperate latitudes (31.7%).
• Such hotspots are concentrated in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands.

What is the importance of birds to ecosystems and culture?

• Birds contribute toward many ecosystem services that either directly or indirectly benefit humanity.
• These include provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services.
• The functional role of birds within ecosystems as pollinators, seed-dispersers, ecosystem engineers, scavengers and predators.
• They not only facilitate accrual and maintenance of biodiversity but also support human endeavours such as sustainable agriculture via pest control besides aiding other animals to multiply.
• For instance, coral reef fish productivity has been shown to increase as seabird colonies recovered following rat eradication in the Chagos archipelago.
• Wild birds and products derived from them are also economically important as food (meat, eggs).

What are the threats contributing to avian biodiversity loss?

• The study lists eight factors, topped by land cover and land-use change.
• The continued growth of human populations and of per capita rates of consumption lead directly to conversion and degradation of primary natural habitats.
• Deforestation has been driven by afforestation with plantations (often of non-native species) plus land abandonment in parts of the global North, with net loss in the tropics.
• The other factors are habitat fragmentation, degradation, hunting and trapping.

Try this PYQ from CSP 2020:

Q.With reference to India’s Biodiversity, Ceylon frogmouth, Coppersmith barbet, Gray-chinned minivet and White-throated redstart are

(a) Birds

(b) Primates

(c) Reptiles

(d) Amphibians

 

Post your answers here.

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