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Eight avian species declared “extinct” in new study
Why it is in news?
- Scientists have declared eight species of birds to be extinct in what are being seen as the first avian extinctions of the 21st century
Which are these birds?
- The Spix’s macaw, a type of parrot, was last sighted in the wild in 2000.
- The Alagoas foliage-gleaner, a small forest bird, became extinct in 2011.
- The cryptic treehunter has not been seen in the wild since 2007, when its forest home in Murici in north-eastern Brazil was destroyed and replaced with sugar cane plantations and pasture.
- The fourth Brazillian species to go extinct is the Pernambuco pygmy-owl, a 15cm-tall owl that eats insects and hasn’t been seen in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco since 2002.
- The fifth South American species on the list is the glaucous macaw, once found in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil before its palm grove habitat was destroyed to make space for farming.
- Another non-South American species on the list is the poo-uli, or black-faced honeycreeper, which was found on the island of Maui in Hawaii but was last sighted in 2004.
Causes
- The study was conducted by non-profit “BirdLife International” and was published in the journal Biological Conservation.
- Four out of the eight species declared extinct belong to Brazil.
- Five of these new extinctions have occurred in South America and have been attributed by scientists to deforestation to make way for large-scale agriculture and industrial activities
Source
The Hindu