Global bird diversity under threat
Bird species will decline in next 100 years, study warns
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Tuesday, 05, Jun 2007 12:25
Climate change and deforestation will lead to significant declines and extinctions in the world's bird species over the next 100 years, a new study warns.
Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California, San Diego, carried out the first global assessment of how these two factors interact to impact on the 8,750 terrestrial bird species.
David Wilcove, a professor of ecology, evolutionary biology and public affairs at Princeton University, said the findings showed it "is clear that both climate change and habitat destruction pose grave threats to many of the world's birds and, by analogy, to other species as well".
He described the combined factors as "killing two birds with one stone".
The research warns that even under the most optimistic scenarios of controlling climate change and protecting habitats, at least 400 bird species are projected to be threatened by the year 2050 due to reductions in their geographic ranges of greater than 50 per cent.
"We found in our study that under certain assumptions by the year 2100, 950 to 1,800 bird species may be imperiled or even driven to extinction by climate change and habitat destruction," said Walter Jetz, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UCSD and the lead author of the study.
"Most of these species are currently not recognised as imperiled."
To minimise global bird extinctions the researchers propose that there needs to be an expanded network of wildlife reserves in the tropics as well as more ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and monitor the biodiversity impacts of climate change.
"It is crucial that international environmental policy be swiftly developed to focus both on climate change and on habitat loss; the two are not only intimately related, but are arguably the greatest threats not only to birds, but also to human welfare and economic well-being," concluded Andrew Dobson, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University.
The study is published in the journal PLOS Biology.