Sumatran birds closer to extinction due to habitat loss, hunting

Jon Afrizal

The Jakarta Post

Jambi / Wed, February 19, 2020 / 11:19 am

Dozens of bird species endemic to Sumatra Island are closer to extinction because of habitat loss from land use change as well as illegal hunting.

According to bird conservation NGO Burung Indonesia, 42 bird species have been listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. Meanwhile, nine species are listed as critically endangered.

“Most of the species in the critically endangered category are losing their habitat [and are] illegally hunted,” Burung Indonesia spokesman Achmad Ridha Junaid said on Tuesday.

For example, cucak rawa (straw-headed bulbuls) were often hunted to be sold as pets, despite their limited number remaining in the wild, Achmad went on to say. The IUCN red list in August 2018 estimated the number of cucak rawa in the wild at 600 to 1,700.

Some experts believe the species is extinct by now.

Similarly, the rangkong gading (helmeted hornbill) is often hunted for its bright red and yellow solid casque. The species has been included in the critically endangered category.

Achmad said the rangkong gading had been considered vulnerable until 2015, but its status had been increased to critically endangered ever since, because of rampant hunting.

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Native birds in South-eastern Australia worst affected by habitat loss

Date: September 3, 2019

Source: University of Queensland

New research has found that habitat loss is a major concern for hundreds of Australian bird species, and south-eastern Australia has been the worst affected.

The Threatened Species Recovery Hub study, featuring University of Queensland scientists, found that half of all native bird species have each lost almost two-thirds of their natural habitat across Victoria, parts of South Australia and New South Wales.

Lead researcher, Dr Jeremy Simmonds, said the team looked at both threatened and non-threatened birds, including common species.

"While more attention is usually paid to threatened species, common species, like many of our familiar fairy-wrens, pigeons and honeyeaters, are crucially important," Dr Simmonds said.

"Common species play a vital role in controlling insect pests and pollination and their decline through loss of habitat has implications for the health of ecosystems.

"Along with feral and invasive species, habitat destruction is among the greatest threats facing biodiversity in Australia, so it is important to understand how big the problem of habitat removal is: our research developed a method to do this, called the Loss Index.

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The Trump Administration Is Being Sued Over a Very Weird Bird

Oil and gas companies are destroying sage-grouse habitat—with Ryan Zinke’s blessing.

JACKIE FLYNN MOGENSENMAY. 2, 2018 6:00 AM

Environmental groups have filed two lawsuits against US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for approving oil and gas leases on habitat that is home to the greater sage-grouse, an imperiled bird species native to the American West.

Both lawsuits urge the courts to reverse the recent oil and gas land sales, claiming that the Trump administration is ignoring Obama-era conservation plans intended to protect the greater sage-grouse from development, and therefore breaking the law.

“This is politically-driven—it comes from Trump’s ‘America-first’ agenda,” says Laird Lucas, lead counsel on one of the lawsuits and executive director of legal firm Advocates for the West. “The oil and gas industry basically gave Zinke and the Interior Department their wish list of what would happen, and the department is following that.”

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Habitat loss threatens bird species

April 4, 2018

Mom Kunthear / Khmer Times  Share:    

The Wildlife Conservation Society yesterday said that it has protected more than 3,800 nests of 11 globally threatened bird species in tandem with the Ministry of Environment since 2002, leading to the hatching of nearly 7,000 birds in Preah Vihear province.

At the same time, WCS raised concerns that their hard work to protects the birds may be undermined by a changing threat as poaching has dropped but habitat loss has increased.

Rours Vann, WCS’s wildlife monitoring team leader in the Kulen Promtep Wildlife Sanctuary, said yesterday that the tallied figures mark a success for the organisation’s work with the ministry, but noted WCS remains concerned.

He said that their efforts in nest protection have reduced the threat of egg poaching, but a new threat of habitat loss remains worrisome.

“When communities have the opportunity to obtain socio-economic benefits from their wildlife assets, they are more motivated to protect them,” he said. “But we are still worried about the safety of these birds as they are being disturbed by land concessions, building of houses and the villagers’ use of poison to catch fish – which causes birds to die.”

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Greatest threat to Eastern forest birds is habitat loss on wintering grounds

Date: July 24, 2017

Source: Cornell University

Summary: Human-caused habitat loss looms as the greatest threat to some North American breeding birds. The problem will be most severe on their wintering grounds, according to a new study.

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Federally subsidized shrubs, grasses crucial to sage grouse survival in Washington

Date: May 9, 2017

Source: University of Washington

The sage grouse is an exceptionally showy bird and an icon of the American West. But its sagebrush habitat is disappearing, and there is debate over how best to protect the populations in an increasingly developed landscape.

A new study by University of Washington, state and federal researchers analyzed sage grouse in Eastern Washington and showed a surprisingly large benefit from a federal program that subsidizes farmers to plant year-round grasses and native shrubs instead of crops. Although the program was adopted for many different reasons, the study finds it is probably the reason that sage grouse still live in portions of Washington's Columbia Basin.

"Without these lands, our models predict that we would lose about two thirds of the species' habitat, and that the sage grouse would go extinct in two of three subpopulations," said first author Andrew Shirk, a research scientist with the UW's Climate Impacts Group. The study will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was established in 1985. It is a voluntary federal program that pays farmers to plant agricultural land with environmentally beneficial vegetation for 10- to 15-year contracts. The program's goals include improving water quality, reducing soil erosion and boosting wildlife habitat.

Of the roughly 24 million acres planted through the program in the United States, about 1.4 million acres are in Eastern Washington. The fields are planted with native shrubs and perennial grasses that provide cover for sage grouse and other animals.

"From the outset, it was envisioned that the CRP program would be good for wildlife," Shirk said. "But I don't think anyone expected that it would be this valuable. Our results show CRP isn't a substitute for native sagebrush, but mature CRP fields nearby augment native habitat and have had a tremendous positive impact -- it's a wildlife conservation success story."

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Satellites reveal bird habitat loss in California

Stopover wetlands in the Sacramento Valley have shrunk dramatically

Date: March 27, 2017

Source: Duke University

Drought and reduced seasonal flooding of wetlands and farm fields threaten a globally important stopover site for tens of thousands of migratory shorebirds in California's Sacramento Valley, a new Duke University-led study shows.

The researchers' analysis of historical biweekly NASA Landsat satellite images of the valley reveals that flooded habitat near the peak time of spring migration has shrunk by more than twice the size of Washington, D.C. over the last 30 years.

"On average, we're losing an area about four times the size of Central Park each year, during a critical window of time in late March," said Danica Schaffer-Smith, a doctoral student at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who conducted the study with researchers from the nonprofit Point Blue Conservation Science.

More than half of all shorebird species in the Western hemisphere are now in decline, Schaffer-Smith noted.

The Sacramento Valley site is an internationally important resting and refueling stop for tens of thousands of these wetland-dependent birds traveling along the Pacific Flyway. Some of these species migrate thousands of miles from Argentina to Alaska and back again each year.

"The fact that these highly mobile species are increasingly struggling to find flooded habitat on their migrations is an indicator that our freshwater wetland systems are in trouble," Schaffer-Smith said. "Freshwater is essential for all life. Many other species rely on these same habitats, too."

The Sacramento Valley once supported a huge network of wetlands connected to the San Francisco Bay Delta, but more than 90 percent of them have been drained for agriculture. Analysis of recent satellite images by Schaffer-Smith and her team shows that open water covers just three percent of the landscape during peak migration in April, when the birds urgently need flooded habitat to rest and feed.

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More than half of world's godwits and curlews face extinction

Posted on: 02 Mar 2017

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A ground-breaking study has revealed that habitat loss could lead to the extinction of some of the world's curlew and godwit species.
Godwits and curlews – which make up the subfamily Numeniini of the sandpiper family Scolopacidae – occur on all continents except Antarctica, but breed only in the Northern Hemisphere. Over half are of global conservation concern, with two of these – Eskimo Curlew and Slender-billed Curlew – currently treated as Critically Endangered though both are likely to be extinct.
Far Eastern Curlew, a charismatic species of the East Asian Flyway, is considered Endangered, while Bristle-thighed Curlew, breeding in Alaska and wintering on tropical Pacific islands, is listed as Vulnerable. Three further species – Eurasian Curlew and Bar-tailed and Black-tailed Godwits, all of which occur in the UK – are globally Near Threatened.
The just-published study canvassed the views of over 100 experts and reviewed the scientific literature to help highlight the many threats they face, and top of the list is the loss of non-breeding habitat.
Most species rely on coastal estuaries and wetlands outside of the breeding season, many of which face increasing development and disturbance. This pressure is greatest in the Yellow Sea of China and Korea, perhaps the most important staging area in the world for migratory birds in terms of numbers, diversity and proportion of threatened species. Part of the East Asian Australasian Flyway, the Yellow Sea provides a vital rung in the migratory ladder between northern breeding areas in Asia and Alaska and southern non-breeding areas as far south as New Zealand and as far west as India.
A quarter of the Yellow Sea's mudflat feeding areas have been lost since the 1980s and much of the remainder is heavily degraded, causing declines in many wader species that depend on it. Increasing pressure for coastal development elsewhere in Asia and across the Americas may similarly affect other species.

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Bird species vanish from UK due to climate change and habitat loss

Rising temperatures and crop farming mean birds are disappearing from parts of England, says study, while butterflies and dragonflies are faring better

Damian Carrington

Wednesday 11 January 2017 06.00 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 11 January 2017 08.44 GMT

Climate change has already led to the vanishing of some bird species in parts of England, where intensively farmed land gives them no room to adapt to warming temperatures. The revelation, in a new scientific study, contradicts previous suggestions that birds are tracking global warming by shifting their ranges.

The research found that birds that prefer cooler climes, such as meadow pipits, willow tits and willow warblers, have disappeared from sites in south-east England and East Anglia, where intensive crop growing is common.

“Birds are facing a double-edged sword from climate change and declines in habitat quality,” said Tom Oliver, at the University of Reading, who led the new study. “In England, birds really look like they are struggling to cope with climate change. They are already being hit with long-term reductions in habitat quality and, for the cold-associated birds, those losses are being further exacerbated by climate change.”

“Climate change is with us, here and now, and its effects on wildlife are increasingly well documented,” said Mike Morecroft, principal climate change specialist at Natural England, and part of the research team.

Simon Gillings, at the British Trust for Ornithology, and another member of the research team, said: “Intensive [land] management is making it harder for cold-associated birds to find cool corners of sites, or to disperse away from warming regions.”

But Oliver noted that showing the impact of climate change on wildlife is affected by the availability of good habitats means action can be taken: “We are not completely at the mercy of climate change.” Creating larger natural areas in strategic places will help species cope with a changing climate, the scientists said.



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