Climate change hitting birds

2008-05-19 20:05

Bonn - 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 dropped 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 UN 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 most extinctions have occurred.

Appeal to governments

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 UN 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.

But it also showed 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 UN 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.

- Reuters