Relevance: GS-3: Conservation, environmental pollution, and degradation, environmental impact assessment

Key Phrases: State Of The World’s Birds, Hotspots For Threatened species, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Trophic Cascade, Human Footprint, Mass Extinction.

Context:

• A study by nine renowned avian experts and conservationists has revealed that 48% of the bird species are undergoing population decline.
• The State of the World’s Birds, an annual review of environmental resources has attributed the threat to almost half of the 10,994 recognized extant species of birds to the expanding human footprint on the natural world and climate change.

Key Highlights:

• The State of the World’s Birds says 13.5% of 10,994 recognized extant species are currently threatened with extinction.
• These include 798 classified as vulnerable (7%), 460 as endangered (4%), and 223 as critically endangered (2%).
• Many metrics of avian biodiversity are exhibiting globally consistent negative trends, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List Index showing a steady deterioration in the conservation status of the global avifauna over the past three decades.

Key Threats to Avian Biodiversity:

1. Loss of Natural habitat: The degradation and loss of natural habitats, as well as direct overexploitation of many species, are the key threats to avian biodiversity.
2. Overexploitation: The use of 37% of the surviving bird species as common or exotic pets and 14% as food are examples of direct overexploitation.
3. Hunting and trapping: There is threat of hunting and trapping in different parts of the world, including northeast India. For some species, like the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard, power transmission lines represent the most significant threat.
4. Birdwatching: A global pastime involving millions of people, as a form of avian conservation but has “local negative impacts” due to feeding birds valued at $5-6 billion per year and growing by 4% annually.
5. Trophic Cascade: It is an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in dramatic changes in ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling and thus causing threat to the bird species.

Status of Avian Diversity Globally:

• The first signs of a new wave of extinctions of continentally-distributed bird species are now being witnessed which has followed the historic loss of species on islands like the dodo.
• More threatened bird species (86.4%) are found in tropical than in temperate latitudes, with hot spots for threatened species concentrated in the tropical Andes, southeast Brazil, eastern Himalayas, eastern Madagascar, and Southeast Asian islands.
• Around 57% of North American species are recording declining trends, a net loss of almost 3 billion birds since 1970, the study found.
• 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, which translates into a net loss of 560-620 million individuals.
• In North America, long-distance migratory species have been badly affected.
• Farmland species in Europe have declined precipitously by 57% since 1980, driven by agricultural intensification, the paper said.

Status of Avian diversity in India:

• The loss in avian diversity is no less alarming in India, where current annual trends available for the past five years have been estimated for 146 species.
• Of these, nearly 80% are declining in numbers, and almost 50% plummeting strongly.
• Just over 6% of the species studied show stable populations and 14% show increasing population trends.
• Although there are no confirmed recent continental extinctions in Asia, numerous threatened species have not been seen in recent years.
• For example, the critically endangered Jerdon’s Courser, endemic to the Eastern Ghats in India, has not been seen since 2009.
• The study also referred to a graph from the Indian report that showed a 62% decline in forest species since before 2000, 59% decline in grassland and shrub species, and 47% decline in wetland species.

Way Forward:

1. Prioritizing landscapes:
   • If unique ecosystems like grasslands are to retain their diverse birdlife into the future, both governments and research groups must prioritize such landscapes and their inhabitants for conservation and ensure that they do not become plantations or woodlands.
2. Population Change estimates:
   • Conservation strategy includes conducting reliable estimates of population abundance and change.
3. Prevent OverExploitation:
   • Novel and more effective solutions applied at scale for demand reduction for over harvested wild birds.
4. Proper implementation of green Energy Transitions:
   • Monitoring green energy transitions that can impact birds if inappropriately implemented.
5. Eradication of populations of invasive alien species:
   • Shifting human societies to economically sustainable development pathways, among others, to deal with bird diversity loss.

Conclusion:

• Birds are highly visible and sensitive indicators of environmental health, their loss signals a much wider loss of biodiversity and a threat to human health and well-being.
• Thus, we need coordinated actions of government, environmentalists, and citizens to reduce the expanding human footprint on nature in order to reduce the pace of rapid mass extinction.

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. What are the reasons for the decline in avian diversity globally. Suggest measures for the conservation of bird species. (250 words).