Humans May Have Driven Twice as Many Bird Species to Extinction as Previously Thought (1 Viewer)

[Mysticete]

Kind of gives you a sobering number there...~1,200 species is the estimate. Which makes sense if you consider island endemics. It's very likely for instance that the Mediterranean islands had a whole host of really cool endemic birds, that we just don't have evidence for because humans took them out way before there were good records. I mean, if Sicily had an endemic...thrush, would anyone be able to distinguish it from other Turdus based on a few fragmentary limb bones? Even today there are birds that were barely discovered before we likely wiped them out, as is the case with some of the Atlantic Forest endemics in Brazil.

Humans May Have Driven Twice as Many Bird Species to Extinction as Previously Thought

Statistical modeling of undiscovered extinctions suggests 1,430 bird species have disappeared during modern human history

www.smithsonianmag.com

 

[01101001]

Not your fault, but, hopefully, now that President Biden is in office, the US will change its stance on the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

File:Convention on Biological Diversity2.svg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.m.wikimedia.org

(Sign the Petition)

 

[Andy Lakin]

What bird species have become extinct purely due to hunting? I was listening to a podcast recently about the Dodo and it said that introduced predators were a big factor in their demise and hunting was the final straw. What was the main cause of the Passenger Pigeon becoming extinct?

 

[MiddleRiver]

Why the US won’t join the single most important treaty to protect nature

America’s absence from the Convention on Biological Diversity hurts global efforts to avert extinction, experts say.

www.vox.com

 

[Mysticete]

What bird species have become extinct purely due to hunting? I was listening to a podcast recently about the Dodo and it said that introduced predators were a big factor in their demise and hunting was the final straw. What was the main cause of the Passenger Pigeon becoming extinct?

Off the top of my head, Carolina Parakeet, Great Auk, Spectacled Cormorant, and Guadalupe Caracara. I think Passenger Pigeons may have been made more vulnerable due to habitat loss, with overhunting the sort of final straw.

I think with many island birds it can be hard to disentangle the effects of direct hunting vs habitat alteration/introduction of rodents/pigs/dogs. especially since a large number of extinctions have happened without much of a historic record. It seems likely that Elephant birds and Moas would have been heavily impacted by hunting and its hard to imagine that didn't play a bigger role than other factors.

 

[01101001]

Why the US won’t join the single most important treaty to protect nature

America’s absence from the Convention on Biological Diversity hurts global efforts to avert extinction, experts say.

www.vox.com

Interesting: it also says that the US hasn't ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (along with such luminaries as Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Tonga and the Holy See, and that's it).

EDIT: Except Iran, Somalia and Sudan have paid maternity leave. Turns out, even Vatican (a theocratic absolute monarchy) is more liberal and pro-women, with both a paid maternity leave and a paid paternity leave:

Vatican Introduces Three Days of Paid Paternity Leave for Employees

From March 1, an employee who is a new father — through birth, adoption, or fostering — will have the right to be off for three working days while receiving his full salary.

www.ncregister.com

EDIT 2: Apologies for making the unwarrated assumption that no paid maternity leave means unpaid maternity leave, when it usually actually means no maternity leave whatsoever:

Paid Maternity Leave by State 2024

 

[Mysticete]

Probably best to move conversations on unsigned treaties to Ruffled feathers....

 

[Melanie]

I only wanted to say that we had the same thread in the bird paleontology category because I've thought this is a more suitable category. Unfortunately you have decided to discuss this topic in this thread and so I have to decided to delete my own contribution. There was a paper in the old thread which I don't wanted to withheld because David Steadman had a much higher estimation of extinct birds in 2003 than in the new paper.

Maybe it is also of advantage to post the original paper instead of a press release

Undiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves

Undiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves - Nature Communications

The true number of human-driven bird extinctions is likely larger than we think. Here, the authors combine recorded extinctions with estimates from the fossil record to suggest that ~1400 bird species have gone extinct since the Late Pleistocene.

www.nature.com

And here is the Steadman paper

The late Quaternary extinction and future resurrection of birds on Pacific islands

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825202001162

 

[Melanie]

I must say that I've find the estimations by Steadman more accurate than the new estimations. There are thousands of Pacific Islands and many of these islands could have their own extinct bird species. But you will never find their bones because they have disappeared do to several reasons. Another reason is that even the islands could disappear.

 

[jurek]

I think such estimates are over-estimates. There is a well known rule that small bird populations in small areas are very prone to extinction. This is one principle why birds which survive only in small reserves or small islands are endangered.

But the same applies also to the natural situation of small islands. Most bird populations on small islands would have naturally quickly gone extinct, either before developing into distinct races / species, or later.