State of World’s Birds Report

The State of World’s Birds report was recently published. It is BirdLife International’s flagship science publication, using birds to assess the condition of our ecosystems as a whole.

Key highlights of the report –

• Around 48% of bird species worldwide are known or suspected to be undergoing population decline.
• In India, nearly 80% species are declining in numbers, and almost 50% plummeting strongly.
• Around 57% of North American species are recording declining trends, a net loss of almost 3 billion birds since 1970. The situation is similar in the European Union, where trends across 378 species indicate an overall decrease in breeding bird abundance of 17-19% between 1980 and 2017.
• The study found that bird species and abundance data from the tropics is scarce but in many countries such as India, citizen science driven data was available.

What is the reason behind this decline?

• The report has attributed the expanding human footprint on the natural world and climate change as the threat to almost half of the recognised species of birds.
• The degradation and loss of natural habitats as well as direct overexploitation of many species are the key threats to avian biodiversity.

About Bird Life International –

• It is a global partnership of conservation organisations that strives to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people towards sustainability in the use of natural resources.
• It is world’s largest conservation partnerships for conservation of birds and their habitats.
• It was earlier known as International Committee for Bird Preservation.
• Its global office is in Cambridge (UK) with 6 regional offices – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific.
• It publishes a quarterly magazine, World Birdwatch, which contains recent news and authoritative articles about birds, their habitats, and their conservation around the world.
• It is the official Red List authority for birds, for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
• It also published important bird areas (IBA) inventory.