Report Launch: State of the World’s Birds

BirdLife International has launched a new publication and website, the 2008 State of the World’s Birds, today at their World Conference in Buenos Aires. The review is published every four years by BirdLife International, and the 2008 theme is ‘Indicators of our changing world’. The highlights the worldwide decline of common birds, providing evidence of a rapid deterioration in the global environment that is affecting all life on earth. At present one in eight of the world’s birds – 1,226 species – are Globally Threatened according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Of these, 190 face an imminent risk of extinction. Key global threats identified by the report include industrial-scale agriculture and fishing, spread of invasive species, logging and the replacement of natural forest with monocultural plantations. BirdLife International is a global alliance of conservation organizations working in more than 100 countries and territories that, together, form the leading authority on the status of birds, their habitats and the issues and problems facing them. BirdLife International is a Key Indicator Partner of the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (2010 BIP) and has had a major role in the development and implementation of two of the biodiversity indicators, the Red List Index and the Global Wild Bird Index. In 2007, the Red List Index, which was initially designed and tested by BirdLife International, was selected to be the basis of a new Millennium Development Goal (MDG) indicator, known as the ‘Proportion of species threatened with extinction’.

Posted: 22 September 2008
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