Shorebird Populations Drop Globally, Some by a Third

Shorebird Populations Drop Globally, Some by a Third

by | Feb 19, 2025 | NEWS, The Problem: Civilization

Editor’s note: “Birds and Offshore Wind: Developing the Offshore Wind that Birds Need”. – 2025 National Audubon Society

With up to a million birds currently being killed each year directly(which does not include indirect causes from mining and manufacturing) by wind turbines in the US, why would an organization dedicated to protecting birds say such a thing? Add on the fact that Wind facilities also require relatively large areas of land and sea. Facility development fragments and otherwise alters habitat in ways that make it unsuitable for species that have historically been present.

Report: “Conflicts of Interest” – Environmental Organizations(Audubon among them) Take Offshore Wind Industry Money

“These offshore projects, which could decimate hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, will be built by some of the largest international oil and gas companies in the world,” the group said. “Our findings take on suspended belief when one considers Ørsted’s involvement with the New Jersey Audubon Society.” The Danish company is the official sponsor of the New Jersey Audubon Society’s fundraiser, the World Series of Birding where funds are raised to support bird conservation.

By Kristine Sabillo / Mongabay

Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, reassessed around half of the 254 species of shorebirds the organization currently monitors, for 2024, according to Ian Burfield, BirdLife International’s global science coordinator. 

The reassessment was prompted by a study published last year that showed steep declines in many shorebird species in North America, Burfield told Mongabay via email. 

“[B]ut as it only covered part of their global populations, we had to source equivalent data from elsewhere … to produce a global picture, before applying the IUCN Red List criteria to reassess their status,” Burfield said. “Most species did not need recategorizing, but of those that did, virtually all have deteriorated.”

After the latest reassessment, seven of the 16 shorebird species were categorized as “near threatened” and nine are now “vulnerable” to extinction as they experienced global population declines of 20-40% over three generations.

BirdLife International said in a statement that migratory birds are especially at risk as they follow specific migration flyways or routes and stop along the way to rest and feed at certain sites that now face threats like habitat loss and climate change impacts.

“While many of these shorebirds remain numerous and are still commonly encountered along their flyways, new analyses of data from long-term monitoring schemes reveal that the global populations of some species have declined by more than a third in recent decades,” Burfield said in the statement.

Among those that have now been moved into a higher “threatened” category of vulnerable are the gray plover (Pluvialis squatarola) and the curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea), both of which breed in various parts of the Arctic and migrate globally during their nonbreeding seasons. They both face threats from habitat loss and degradation, hunting, and climate change impacts.

The Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica), a large shorebird that breeds in northern Canada and Alaska and migrates to South America during its nonbreeding months, is also now considered vulnerable. The IUCN notes in its assessment of the species that the bird’s population is seeing a “significant decline … most severely noted in numbers recorded at migratory sites in North America.”

BirdLife International said in its statement that protecting shorebirds is also important for the coastal communities that depend on the same habitats as the birds.

‘The perilous declines of migratory birds are a sign that the integrity of flyways is deteriorating,” Burfield said. “Losing the network of habitats that migratory birds depend on to rest and feed during their long journeys could have severe consequences for the millions of people that rely on these sites, as well as the birds.’’ 

 

 

Kristine Sabillo is a wire reporter for Mongabay. She has been a multimedia journalist for more than a decade and has produced political, science and environment content for the online, print, television and radio newsrooms of leading media organizations in the Philippines. Feedback: Use this form to send a message to this author. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the article page.

 

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

Obsession with industrial development harming biodiversity in Turkey

by | Mar 28, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction

By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay

Turkey: the splendor of the Hagia Sophia, the ruins of Ephesus, and the bizarre caves of the Cappadocia. For foreign travelers, Turkey is a nation of cultural, religious, and historic wonders: a place where cultures have met, clashed, and co-created. However, Turkey has another wealth that is far less known: biodiversity. Of the globe’s 34 biodiversity hotspots, Turkey is almost entirely covered by three: the Caucasus, the Irano-Anatolian, and the Mediterranean. Despite its wild wealth, conservation is not a priority in Turkey and recent papers in Science and Biological Conservation warn that the current development plans in the country, which rarely take the environment into account, are imperiling its species and ecosystems.

“The current ‘developmentalist obsession,’ particularly regarding water use, threatens to eliminate much of what remains, while forcing large-scale migration from rural areas to the cities. According to current plans, Turkey’s rivers and streams will be dammed with almost 4,000 dams, diversions, and hydroelectric power plants for power, irrigation, and drinking water by 2023,” the authors write, adding that other threats include urbanization, wetland-draining, and poaching.

Turkey is particularly rich in plants: with over 9,000 recorded to date, a third of them are found only in Turkey. Amphibians and reptiles are also highly diverse with 150 species to date. And Turkey, even now, still retains some startling big mammals including the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), brown bear (Ursus arctos), gray wolf (Canis lupus), caracal (Caracal caracal), and Eurasian Lynx (Lynx lynx). But it has also lost nearly as many as it has retained, including cheetahs, lions, tigers, and aurochs.Turkey is also a hugely important bird country with over 500 species identified so far.”Turkey lies at the intersection of globally important bird migration flyways. It has the highest number of breeding bird species in the Europe, but also the highest number of threatened bird species in Europe,” co-author Cagan Sekercioglu, a Turkish ornithologist and ecologist, with Stanford, told mongabay.com. “Few people realize that the famous Rift Valley bird migration over Israel and into Africa, and the Rift Valley itself, begin in Turkey. Bird species of traditional farms are declining fastest in Europe but can still be found in large numbers in the bioculturally diverse rural communities of Turkey, particularly in the east. Among others, Turkey hosts globally important breeding populations of threatened white-headed ducks, Egyptian vultures, sakers, great bustards, and imperial eagles, and is a key stopover site for declining migratory bird species like sociable plovers.”But all of Turkey’s remaining species are facing threats. In 2012 the Yale Environmental Performance Index ranked Turkey in the bottom 8 percent for its biodiversity and habitat conservation efforts, putting Turkey in the same category as some of the world’s most troubled and impoverished countries, such as Haiti, Libya, Eritrea, and Iraq. But scientists warn that recent policy efforts could push Turkey, which is working to become an economic powerhouse, even lower.

“Turkey’s environmental laws and conservation efforts are eroding, not improving. This has precipitated a conservation crisis that has accelerated over the past decade. This crisis has been exacerbated by legislative developments that may leave Turkey with a nature conservation legal framework that is weakened and severely out of line with globally accepted principles,” scientists wrote recently in separate letter in Science.Loose laws, poor enforcement, and little public oversight has created a situation whereby the Turkish government is capable of steamrolling any environmental concerns.”The government, practically unopposed, easily modifies existing laws and passes new ones to remove any environmental obstacles to the construction of dams, mines, factories, roads, bridges, housing projects, and tourism developments. Such construction increasingly occurs in ‘protected’ areas, often at the expense of local people,” the authors write.