In the animate movie “Rio,” a Spix’s Macaw named Blu travels to Minnesota towards Rio de Janeiro because he’s the last male living of his species. That’s the location where Jewel is the only living female. Blu and Jewel eventually fall in love and have an infant and the film concludes happily, with the belief that the true lovebirds will be able to save their race. In real life, however, Blu was way too far behind.
A recent study from BirdLife International, the Do Birds Have Sex global alliance of conservation organizations that strive to save bird species throughout the globe, shows that over the past few years, a number of species of birds have lost their struggle to survive. One of them is the stunning Spix’s Macaw. The species is thought to be extinct from the wild though some of the birds are still part of breeding programs.
Although the majority of bird
deaths in the last century have been on islands that are not inhabite The study found that five of the eight species identifie by this study were within South America – four in Brazil alone, a devastating assertion of the consequences of forest destruction in this part of the globe.
In the present, in the midst of the threat of human-cause climate changes and the rapid expansion of urban areas, as well as increasing extreme weather condition most of the animals of the world are in an to adapt or die situation.
In the winter of 2012, CBSN Originals
went to the Galapagos which is where animals like giant tortoises as well as marine iguanas finches and cormorants with perfectly tuned beaks developed in the isolation for millions of years way before humans even walked the Earth. However, now the animals are fighting to survive.
Changes in evolutionary processes that used to occur in the course of hundreds of thousands of years, are currently taking place much faster and are happening right before our eyes of ours. Conservationists, like the ones at BirdLife International, are working in a relentless effort to protect wildlife from these changes.
Three other bird species
mentioned in the study — three species of birds — the Cryptic Treehunter, the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner and Poo-uli previously from Hawaii have now lost the fight, there is still hope for a variety of bird species which the report has reclassified in the Critically Endangered category.
At the very minimum with Spix’s Macaw, the children of future generations will be able to gain delight from their distinctive beauty, even in animatronic form. Determining whether species are extinct is a matter of assessing the reliability and timing of data, the frequency and the quality of survey, and the timing, duration, and severity of threats. More
But, prior studies have used qualitative
methods or have only taken into account one of these aspects. We used quantitative approaches that encompassed all three elements to produce the 61 possible and established Extinct types that belong to birds. We evaluated six different strategies using a variety of thresholds, to assign the species’ classification to IUCN Red List Categories, and compared our results to the categories currently used by species. This new method resulted in an 80% agreement with what is currently the IUCN Red List classification of species.
The exceptions are mostly due to species
that were not reclassified until the results of this study. We recommend nine species be reclassified according to the IUCN Red List, with the cryptic Treehunter ( Cichlocolaptes Mazar Barnett), Alagoas foliage-gleaner ( Philidor novae) Poo-Uli ( Melamprosops phagosome) currently being listed as Extinct. We have estimated a total of 187 species that have died since 1500 and 90% of them were insular species. Do Birds Have Sex
The main factors were alien invasive species (46 percent) as well as hunting/trapping (26 percent). The application of this method for non-avian groups could increase the reliability of estimates of extinction rates and species categories on the IUCN Red List.
