BirdGuides

The season and the time we are in now is without a doubt a time in which we are reaping what we have sown. We know that the very ancestors of our beloved birds, dinosaurs, went extinct. So we know that birds could go as well, in our time, because of us, and not some random meteor. Birds are ubiquitous, among us and around and above the planet in all habitats across all terrains – from amazing altitudes in our skies to profound depths of our oceans. A recent scientific paper based on BirdLife science reminds us of diverse species such as swifts and frigatebirds which eat, sleep, and copulate on the wing while others may sail the seas thousands of kilometres from land for much of the year. A Rüppell’s vulture collided with an aircraft at an altitude of 11,300 m and an emperor penguin was recorded diving to 564 m depth. Now, in BirdLife’s relatively short lifetime, we know that birds which existed previously in multitudes are now suddenly, scarily, scarce or gone for ever; 187 species of birds have gone extinct over the past 500 years. Today almost half of all bird species are declining. North America alone has lost three billion birds in the last 50 years. BirdLife handing over a French petition to reduce hunting to the President of the European Parliament in 2000 European Union data says that since 1980, 560– 620 million individual birds have been lost overall. Nearly 60% of farmland species of birds in Europe have disappeared since 1980. Ideas that fly! On this our 100th anniversary, we are changing again at the tipping point of the next decade for the planet’s survival. The UN tells us 1 million species are likely to go extinct. The amazing tapestry of biodiversity is being ripped apart species thread by species thread. However, the granular effectiveness of many BirdLife projects form the foundatin for even broader, ambitious and urgent large-cale ideas. Ideas that fly! Together we are tackling the economic systems underpinning our destructive behaviour. We are launching big projects from working across entire flyways, involving hundreds of millions of birds and people, to networks of critical key biodiversity areas in Latin America and Africa, integrating our proven solutions with our local communities for climate mitigation and nature restoration and preservation. With partners such as the Bezos Earth Fund and the Asian Development Bank, we are rethinking how to put nature at the heart of global finance, as an investment not a cost. Yes, to everything there is a season. We have reaped much from this planet and from nature over the past century, too much indeed, and now we see that what we have sown are the seeds of our very destruction. If we do not act decisively now, we shall fail the test of the next decade, the next century, and, tragically, of all time. The Danube Delta was protected in 2011 Birds are telling us with piercing alarm that all life on earth is in peril “Birds truly are the canary in the coal mine as indicators for the health of our planet, given their sensitivity to ecosystem changes, their ubiquity around the planet, and how well studied they are. [We] need to listen and act upon what birds are telling us, as they disappear ever faster.’ Patricia Zurita, BirdLife CEO G LOBAL B IRDFAIR 2022 j 31