 Jason D Weckstein, Ben D Marks/NCRC
White-necked Picathartes: one of the species to benefit from Gola Forest being declared a national park
Zoom In |
BirdLife's 2007 World Round-up - Part 1: Climate change
28-12-2007
As the year draws to a close, we take this opportunity to look back on the events of 2007 from a BirdLife perspective.
Climate change dominated the news agenda across the world in 2007, in fact the environment has never been higher on the political and social agenda. BirdLife International attended the climate change talks in Bali in December, promoting a new mechanism that would result in reduced carbon by slowing and reversing deforestation in developing countries. The Birdlife Partnership, lead by Burung Indonesia and RSPB introduced the delegates to the world’s first restoration forest, Harapan in Sumatra, which is supported by the conference’s Indonesian host government. Tropical deforestation accounts for about 20% of all human-induced emissions every year; while tropical forests are the most ecologically rich of all forest types, home to 70% of the world’s plant and animal species.
To coincide with the Bali conference, the Sierra Leonean government announced that the 75,000-hectare Gola Forest (best known for the White-necked Picathartes Picathartes gymnocephalus) was to become the country's second national park, protecting more than 50 mammal species, and 274 bird species of which 14 are close to extinction –while continuing to sequester huge amounts of carbon. The project has had huge input from the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone and RSPB and is backed by the European Commission and French government, providing the Bali conference with another compelling example of the mutual benefits that result when richer countries support conservation work in developing nations.
 Marco Lambertini
Introducing Harapan, Sumatra, the world’s first restoration forest
Zoom In |
The RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) is to harness rising sea levels to create one of Europe’s largest coastal wetlands and help wildlife adapt to climate change. Wallasea Island Wild Coast Project will restore the island’s wetlands, creating the largest ‘tidal exchange’ scheme in the UK. The £12 million ($24 million) scheme will be the RSPB’s most ambitious and costly in the UK and could lure back species, like Eurasian Spoonbill Platalea leucorodia, which have not nested successfully in the country for more than 400 years.
Birds have long been used as indicators of the state of the world’s ecosystems. Now the Birdlife Africa Partnership, assisted by the RSPB, is involved in a two-year project to assess the possible impacts of climate change on bird distributions. With this information, conservationists will examine the effect this may have on Africa’s network of Important Bird Areas. “The threat of climate change has particular significance to sites that are in isolated habitats, where species have limited choice to shift as changing climate alters habitat quality and extent,” explained Julius Arinaitwe, BirdLife Africa’s Important Bird Area Programme Manager.
The changing conservation status of birds is also to be used to track progress towards the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which range from halving extreme poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability. The Red List Index, which was initially designed and tested by BirdLife International using data on all bird species from 1988-2004, is to be the basis of the new MDG “indicator”.
Hopefully policy makers and governments will listen to what the birds tell us.
Next: Preventing Extinctions