As G8 countries try to hatch a plan to tackle rising CO2 emissions (see “Climate wrangles”), a global analysis of the effects that human activities will have on land birds is ruffling conservationists’ feathers.
By 2050, up to 900 species of land birds could be threatened by climate change and habitat destruction through activities such as logging. By 2100, the number of bird species on the World Conservation Union’s Red List of threatened species may more than double.
Walter Jetz from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues mapped the distributions of all 8750 known land bird species against habitat changes predicted in several potential environmental futures in the UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (PLoS Biology, vol 5, p e157). “Species in temperate regions will suffer mostly from climate change,” says Jetz, “but in the tropics, where birds are especially diverse and have small ranges, land conversion such as deforestation will have an even bigger impact.”
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“The specialists confined to small areas don’t cope well with habitat change, and this applies to many tropical bird species,” agrees Bill Sutherland, a conservation biologist from the University of Cambridge.
By identifying fragile regions, Jetz hopes his work will help policy-makers become more proactive, with improved targeting of conservation efforts. “Protecting tropical forests is also a strong buffer against future climate change,” he says.
