Pacific Territories are listed as Endangered or Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List - the organization's two highest threat levels. Many more species face the same danger: 263 bird species in the Americas and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed taking 11 bird species off of the Endangered Species list due to extinction - eight from Hawai‘i alone. Pacific Territories, 20 bird species have gone extinct in the wild since 1968. How Conservationists Prevent Bird Extinctions As is the case with other endangered and extinct Hawaiian forest birds, the most important factor in the birds' decline was probably avian malaria carried by introduced mosquitoes. When discovered in 1975, this species' population was already in accelerated decline, and final efforts to breed the last remaining birds were ultimately unsuccessful. Found only on Maui, the Po‘ouli subsisted on a diet of insects, snails, and spiders. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Po‘ouli, a Hawaiian honeycreeper and the only member of the genus Melamprosops, was extinct. Keep scrolling below the list to learn how conservationists are fighting against extinction and how you can help imperiled birds bounce back. They represent a broad range of bird families, and their extinctions happened in time periods stretching from the Renaissance to just a few decades ago.Īlthough you'll never add any of these birds to your life list, we hope they'll serve as a reminder of what we've lost, and as motivation to continue to support critical conservation efforts for the endangered birds still with us. The list below introduces you to some of the most famous birds to have gone extinct around the world. This suggests a future of declining biodiversity that favors widespread, generalist species.Ī species' disappearance can have rippling ecological, cultural, and even economic effects, and as we enter what many experts consider our planet's sixth mass extinction, we should all be alarmed about what the future may hold.īut the news isn't all bad: In recent decades, spurred by the permanent loss of the species listed below and others, there have been successful conservation actions that have prevented other losses. Many of these occur within small, restricted ranges. Today, the birds most at risk of extinction tend to be those reliant upon specific, niche environmental conditions. These include: competition with and predation by introduced species, unsustainable hunting and trapping by humans, habitat loss due to human activities such as agriculture and logging, and a combination of these factors. More than 180 bird species (out of around 10,000 total) have likely gone extinct over the last 500 years, and the rate of extinction is accelerating.īird species have disappeared for a number of reasons. Early representation of the Dodo, circa 1625.
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