Climate change hitting bird species Hard
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Climate change hitting bird species Hard*
19 May 2008 13:32:35 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Madeline Chambers
BONN, Germany, May 19 (Reuters) - One in eight of the world's birds are
at risk of extinction as climate change puts birds under great pressure,
a leading conservation group warned on Monday.
The population of rare birds such as the Floreana mockingbird of the
Galapagos Islands or the spoon-billed sandpiper, which breeds in
northeastern Russia and winters in south Asia, has declined sharply and
they could go extinct, the International Union for Conservation of
Nature said in a report.
The 2008 "Red List for Birds" report, published on the first day of a
May 19-30 U.N. conference about biodiversity in the German city of Bonn,
said 1,226 species of bird were now threatened.
The annual report, closely watched among conservationists, added eight
of the world's 10,000 bird species to the Critically Endangered
category, the greatest level of threat.
"The latest update of the IUCN Red List shows that birds are under
enormous pressure from climate change," said Jane Smart, head of the
IUCN Species Programme. The IUCN groups governments, conservation groups
and scientists.
Long-term drought and sudden extreme weather are putting additional
stress on habitats that threatened species depend on, said the report,
noting that extinction rates were rising on continents, rather than on
islands where, historically, most extinctions have occurred.
Of the 26 species that moved category due to changes in their population
size, rate of decline or range size, 24 were moved up to a higher level
of threat.
CURLEW, WARBLER
They included the Eurasian curlew and Dartford warbler, which lives in
Europe and north-west Africa. Both were previously in the "Least
Threatened" category.
"We urge governments to take the information contained in (the report)
seriously and do their level best to protect the world's birds," said
Smart. The U.N. Climate Panel says that burning of fossil fuels is
stoking global warming.
The report showed that Brazil and Indonesia had the highest number of
threatened bird species with 141 and 133 respectively.
The group picked out several other species, including the Mallee emuwren
in Australia which has suffered from years of drought and is seeing its
population shrink sharply.
Its habitat has become so fragmented that a single bushfire could be
catastrophic, said the report.
In the Galapagos Islands, the population of the Floreana mockingbird has
fallen to fewer than 60 from an estimated 150 in 1996 and is now on the
Critically Endangered list because the species is vulnerable to extreme
weather.
The report also pointed to some species that had fared better as a
result of conservation efforts, including the Marquesan Imperial-pigeon
and the little spotted kiwi.
Around 4,000 delegates at the U.N. meeting of the Convention on
Biodiversity will discuss ways to safeguard the range of species and try
to slow the rate of extinctions among plants and animals. (Editing by
Ibon Villelabeitia)