The increasing threat
Without human interference, the natural rate of extinctions should be less than one each century.
Currently it is at least fifty times that and rising fast. In the last thirty years alone, we have lost 21 species and the Po’o-uli, Hawaiian Crow and Spix’s Macaw have all disappeared from the wild since the year 2000.
 Steve Arlow / Rare Birds Yearbook
Black Stilt: just 22 individuals are thought to remain
Zoom In |
“Critically Endangered” describes species that have reached the highest category of extinction risk on the IUCN 'Red List': those which have reached the brink of extinction.
Some like Black Stilt Himantopus novaezelandiae (right), are already reduced to just a handful of individuals.
Many like Taita Thrush Turdus helleri are confined to diminishing fragments of their former habitat.
Others like Red-headed Vulture Sarcogyps calvus are still widespread and still have populations measurable in thousands, but are in dramatic decline, having lost over 80 percent of their numbers in just three generations.
Some long-lived species, like Philippine Eagle Pithecophaga jeffreyi are otherwise doomed to extinction because young birds are not surviving to replace the adults who will die in the next decade or two.
The 2007 IUCN Red List includes 189 bird species classified as Critically Endangered (view the list of Critically Endangered species). A further 356 are waiting in the wings – classified Endangered.
The good news is that between 1994 and 2004, sixteen species were actually saved from extinction - all of these, the result of specific conservation actions.