THE world’s birds are in crisis. Despite concerted conservation attempts, more than 1000 species face extinction caused by habitat loss, predation by alien species and climate change, and the status of most is not improving.
This sobering analysis comes from a 70-page report presented to more than 300 delegates at the world conference of BirdLife International under way in Durban, South Africa, this week. The report, State of the World’s Birds 2004, compiled by BirdLife’s secretariat in Cambridge, UK, shows scant evidence of any progress towards slowing the loss of the planet’s biodiversity before 2010, the target set by governments…
