144 bird species have disappeared in the last ten years:citizen science can help find them

To encourage citizen science, scientists have published a list of bird species that lack recent records.

• A coalition of NGOs has published a list of bird species that have not been sighted for at least ten years.
• In total there are 144 and the majority (62 percent) are classified as in danger of extinction.
• The initiative seeks to involve bird watching enthusiasts:Collecting information is useful for scientific research and conservation.

The Compassù of Jambandú (Vidua raricola) has a slender appearance, a rounded head, pointed wings and a square-tipped tail.The male is shiny black with greenish reflections, the female has brown feathers on the back and whitish-grey on the belly.It inhabits several African countries and scientists are not worried about its extinction;the last testimony of its existence, however, is one recording of his singing collected in 2008.The Bates weaver (Ploceus batesi) has not even been seen since 1937:the Red List of the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUCN) classifies it as "endangered" but there are reasons to believe that, somewhere, it still survives.They are two of the 144 “disappeared” bird species That scientists have counted, inviting bird watching enthusiasts to go look for them.

The list of 144 disappeared bird species

There list was published in the scientific journal Frontiers in ecology and the environment and is the result of a colossal cataloging work conducted by American Bird Conservancy, Re:wild and Birdlife international, united since 2020 in the Search for lost birds project.This includes bird species, not yet declared extinct, which no one has collected for at least ten years images, audio or genetic material.

There are 144 in total, that is, 1.2 percent of the known species.Of these 144, the majority (62 percent) are in danger of extinction:an eventuality that experts believe to be increasingly concrete as we go back in time with the last known testimony.The list also wants to be one call to action for everyone and everyone who wants to try to look for these species and document them, with a view to citizen science.This benefits both scientific research itself and conservation efforts.

The rediscovery of species that had not been documented for decades

Until 2022, Lo would also have been part of the list Santa Marta saber (Campylopterus phainopeplus).It is a hummingbird about 13 centimeters long, with a curved black beak and bright green and cobalt blue plumage.Since 1879 it had been documented just twice:but precisely in 2022 the ornithologist Yurgen Vega he managed to photograph it while it was leaning on a branch, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, in the north of Colombia.

Two years later, Yurgen Vega – who works for the non-governmental organization Selva – is the co-author of one scientific study which describes the characteristics, conditions and status of the species, correcting some identification errors made in the past and filling (at least in part) a gap in knowledge that had persisted for decades.Researchers consider it a microendemism, because it lives only in a very limited habitat in the Guatapurí river basin.