Animal News (Except Bigcats)

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Two iconic birds make a striking comeback, but much work remains

by Shreya Dasgupta on 22 November 2018

• BirdLife International has revised the information for the conservation status of more than 2,300 bird species this year.
• Overall, 31 species of birds were moved to lower threat categories, while 58 species were uplisted to higher threat categories.
• The pink pigeon, which has been downlisted to vulnerable from endangered, and the northern bald ibis, which has been downlisted to endangered from critically endangered, have shown some of the most dramatic improvements.
  

The pink pigeon, found only on the island of Mauritius, was once nearly declared extinct. Another bird, the northern bald ibis, underwent catastrophic declines across much of its habitat in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.


But now, both species are on the path to recovery, according to the latest assessment of the world’s birds by BirdLife International, a global partnership of conservation organizations.

In 2018, BirdLife, which serves as the official Red List Authority for birds for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, revised information on more than 2,300 bird species, based on information gathered by professional and citizen scientists, NGO staff, and birdwatchers from around the world. The assessed birds represent about 22 percent of all the world’s bird species.

“These updates have varied from minor amendments to the text or map for certain species, to comprehensive revisions of the factsheets for species where new information has become available, especially in cases where the species’ threat status has changed so much that they have now been reclassified to a different Red List category,” Ian Burfield, global science coordinator at BirdLife International, told Mongabay.

Overall, in this year’s assessment, BirdLife International moved 31 species of birds to less dire threat categories. (The categories range, in ascending order of threat, from “vulnerable” to “endangered” to “critically endangered.”) Of these, the pink pigeon and the northern bald ibis showed some of the most dramatic improvements.

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Link: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/11/two-iconic-birds-make-a-striking-comeback-but-much-work-remains/

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