In the 19th century, the herds of passenger pigeons over North America used to gather in rivers that flowed like feathers.
According to the latest assessment of the state of bird conservation in the world by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and birdlife international, climate change and overfishing are pushing seabirds such as three-toed gulls and cape to the brink of extinction.
On land, as global temperatures warm, it becomes increasingly difficult for snowy owls to find food in the Arctic wilderness. If China's illegal trapping of the yellow-breasted egret does not stop, the once-sheltered bird is doomed to extinction. In the past, the pecking parrot was threatened by foreign predators, but today, the junk food that tourists provide for these curious parrots is the biggest factor affecting their breeding.
But not entirely hopeless, miracles are happening in other parts of the world; thanks to artificial nests and disturbance regulation, European curlew pelicans are showing a resurgence. In New Zealand, after the implementation of a special control of exotic predators, the pressure on the two native kiwi dimensions has been reduced and the numbers are gradually increasing.
"Most birds have been well studied and they have proven to be an important indicator of environmental health and biodiversity integrity. When a species is at high risk of extinction, it is a very worrying alarm for us and requires immediate action." Dr. Ian Burfield, Global Coordinator of BirdLife International, said. "Thankfully, the success stories of Kiwi and pelicans in conservation show that conservation efforts can make effective progress when resources are available and with broad support from all walks of life."
Below we'll show some newsletters from around the world to see how bird conservation has progressed over the years.
A home with nowhere to live
Reports from the Circum-Arctic region
In recent years, marine fish stocks have been significantly reduced due to changes in marine ecology caused by rising temperatures, as well as overfishing. This greatly affects the quantity and quality of food during the breeding season of the black-legged three-toed gull (rissa tridactyla). Breeding populations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific have difficulty feeding their chicks without adequate food supplies, and direct field observation reports in recent years have also reflected a catastrophic decline in the number of black-legged three-toed gull chicks, and for adult birds, the threat is mainly exposed to the sea surface, such as traditional hunting practices in the Faroe Islands and Greenland, bycatch in fishing activities, and marine pollution, but for young birds, as long as the parent birds encounter accidents in the process of foraging for food, Then the young birds waiting in the nest may starve to death. All of these factors have contributed to a sharp decline in this seabird.
Black-legged three-toed gull
Since 2000, the number of black-legged three-toed gulls nesting in Orkney and Shetland has plummeted by nearly 87 per cent, compared with 96 per cent on St Kilda in the Hebrides. Globally, since the 1970s, the species has been reduced by 40 percent, the level of protection has risen from non-threatened (lc) to vulnerable (vu), and the black-legged three-toed gull usually needs to wander large areas of the sea in search of food, including many "high seas" areas that are not under any national jurisdiction.
"The seabirds around the Arctic, represented by three-toed gulls and knife-billed puffins, have shown a remarkable decline in recent years, providing us with a painful lesson about what bad consequences can happen when countries turn a blind eye to environmental protection." As an officer at BirdLife International Europe, Margaret. Marguerite Tarzia said so.
Recently, BirdLife International identified a public area of water in the Mid-Atlantic region as a Key Bird Area (iba), an important feeding area for more than two dozen species of seabirds, including three-toed gulls. BirdLife International has now submitted to the North-East Atlantic Environmental Protection Convention Organization (OSPAR) to promote the implementation of plans to establish marine protected areas in the region.
When the fishing nets are also starving
The dangers of overfishing
Reports from southern Africa
Ironically for seabirds, they have always been known for their greed among fishermen, but the real culprits of the drastic decline in fishery resources are unaware.
The morus capensis, a seabird that breeds only in western South Africa and Namibia, was once in large numbers but is now facing a serious extinction crisis; the sardines and anchovies, boobys' preferred prey, were overfished, resulting in the near-complete collapse of sardine resources off the coast of southern Africa in the 1960s, and namibia's waters have not yet recovered. This has led to a nearly halving of the population size of the cape booby since 1950. In addition, in South Africa, for unknown reasons, fish have shifted from the western seas to the south and east, with the result that local have to endure starvation, a large number of individuals have died of malnutrition, and the conservation level of cape has been raised from vulnerable (vu) to endangered.
Cape booby
Seabird scientist Christina of the South African branch of BirdLife International. To compensate for the impact of food shortages, many congregate around fishing boats to feed on low-nutrient by-catch discarded by fishing vessels, which not only increases the risk of accidental entanglement and drowning of fishing gear, but also shows that chicks fed with by-catch have a harder time growing and have a lower chance of survival than those fed with natural diets, said Christina Hagen.
In the Southern Ocean, the drastic decline in the number of diomedea antipodensis means that the conservation level of this marine drifter has risen from vulnerable (vu) to endangered (en), and the bycatch caused by longline fishing is the most important threat, as the fishing resources in the ocean are depleted, the albatross has to fly over the wider sea to find sufficient food, and because the female is more likely to be accidentally caught and drowned, There is already a serious gender imbalance in existing albatross populations.
Next passenger pigeon?
Illegal bird nets have put migratory birds that were once infested on the brink of extinction
Reports from Asia
Will emberiza aureola be the next passenger pigeon? None of us know, nor dare we speculate. This bird used to be extremely abundant, but due to large-scale hunting (mainly food), its number has now decreased dramatically, and it has a very high risk of extinction. The images that once obscured the sun like clouds during migration, like rivers of feathers on cultivated land, will soon become memories of Asia's past. The scene is familiar, like a nineteenth-century resurgence of a north American passenger pigeon colony dying under a hunt.
Yellow-breasted male
Known as the "grass finches", the yellow-breasted plover is thought to have declined by more than 80% since 2002, when they were considered a non-threatened (lc) species, and only a dozen years later, they were raised to the highest level on the Red List – cr.
Improvements in transportation have exacerbated poaching, and although it has been illegal in China since 1997, black market trade has never stopped.
The Hong Kong Birdwatching Society has called for immediate action to save the species and has designated 2018 as part of the international Year of the Yellow-breasted Horde as part of a new public campaign in which the HONG KONG SAR government calls on the public to "support indigenous agriculture and reject the consumption of yellow-breasted eagles".
Junk food and endangered parrots
Reports from the Pacific
With the Growing Attention and Energy of the New Zealand Government on Native Species, the population of the two species of kiwi is currently recovering, and the conservation level has been downgraded from endangered to vulnerable (VU), but with the exception of the 2017 New Zealand Bird of the Year, the nestor notabilis, is not doing well, and new information shows that they are decreasing to the point of endangerment, scientific research has found Tourists often feed these curious alpine parrots unhealthy foods (such as bread and fries), but this inadvertently hinders conservation efforts.
Parrots
Nearly 60% of parrot nests are destroyed by predators such as stoats and brown rats each year, and in some low-altitude areas this proportion may rise to 99%, using vet to control the size of local invasive mammals has proven to be very successful in kiwi and other native birds, however, considering that parrots may mistakenly eat poisonous bait, this technique is not yet fully implemented in their habitat.
"Although there are many signs that discourage people from feeding the parrots, there are still many tourists and locals who feed them, this behavior encourages wild flocks to try novel foods, studies have shown that individuals who regularly receive human feedings are far more likely to eat poisonous bait than normal individuals, and the bait is released to control the introduction of predators such as brown house mice, stoats, possums and wild cats, so our biggest challenge in conservation is to prevent tourists or others from feeding wild parrots" - Chief Environmental Advisor of the Forest and Bird Society, Kevin. Kevin Hackwell said.
Assassins on the tundra
Snowy owls are threatened by food shortages
Reports from North America
A worrying piece of news points out that the population of the bubo scandiacus, the flagship species in the tundra region of North America, is much smaller than previously thought and is on a downward trend. Although the trend in northern Eurasia is unclear (European populations have been considered to be in decline), it has been since 1970. Major populations in the U.S. and Canada have declined by 64 percent, and the species, known as Hedwig, was upgraded from non-threatened (lc) to vulnerable (vu) in the latest rating, and climate change is one of a series of threats to species that affect snowmelt rates, thereby reducing the success rate of predation on rodents. Collisions with vehicles or buildings are also another major threat.
Snowy Owl male
Snowy Owl female
"Arctic biodiversity is under pressure from a number of factors, including climate change, and we therefore hope that the crisis of the snow owl as the region's flagship species will also draw wider attention to the region." Dr. Ian Burfield, Global Science Coordinator of BirdLife International.
The lifeline of Europe's largest waterbird
Reports from southern Europe
As a result of long-term and sustained conservation efforts in Europe, the pelecanus crispus population in southeastern Europe has been effectively restored, downgrading from vulnerable (vu) to near-threaten (nt) in the latest assessment, thanks to the thorough implementation of the conservation action plan. And the constraints conferred by the EU Bird and Habitat Conservation Directive, which help protect important breeding grounds in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria, the number of European populations has increased fourfold since the 1990s.
Curly-winged pelican
Since 2017, Montenegro's lake skadar curly-feathered pelican breeding population has been strictly monitored and the associated waters have been cordoned off to protect the brooding of birds from interference, making this breeding season one of the most successful breeding seasons ever, with 60 chicks surviving. In Greece, the local pelican population has grown by 200% over the past 20 years.
Despite growing populations in Europe, the current state of Central Asian populations remains uncertain, and the fragmented small populations of East Asia are under high threat, and even in Europe, this environmentally sensitive species still relies on the full range of conservation staff to reproduce successfully in some wetlands.
The above six birds are a microcosm of the 2017 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, some of them have increased in number due to increased conservation power, with the following level, but more are more dangerous than ever, and are currently among the 111,122 birds recognized by BirdLife International and the World Conservation Union:
There are 156 species that have been extinct since 1500, and there is no reason to believe that there are still individuals who still exist.
5 species of birds have disappeared in the wilderness and only survive in captivity.
A total of 222 species of birds are classified as critically endangered (CR), of which 21 may be extinct and another may be extinct in the wild. Critically endangered species are considered to be at extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.
461 species are endangered, which means they have a high risk of extinction in the wild.
786 vulnerable (vu) species are at high risk of extinction in the wild.
Together, these three endangered species are known as threatened species. About 13% of the living birds, or one in eight, are currently classified as threatened birds.