This bird is considered extinct with a probability of 96%, reports the LPO this Thursday, November 21. If the causes of this disappearance are uncertain, the loss of its habitat and its hunting may have played a role.
The collapse of biodiversity continues, in deafening silence. A migratory bird, the slender-billed curlew, is probably extinct, announces a study published on November 17. This is the first disappearance of a continental bird in the area bringing together Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, deplores the Bird Protection League (LPO) this Thursday.
According to this article published in the ornithological journal IBIS, the slender-billed curlew, light plumage and curved bill, has not been seen with certainty since 1995, when it was seen in Morocco, despite extensive searches. Following the rules of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it is therefore extinct with a probability of 96%, write the authors. On the latest IUCN red list, this bird was classified as critically endangered.
Failure of international cooperation
The slender-billed curlew would be the third species from the Western Palearctic zone to be declared extinct since the start of naturalist monitoring in 1500, after a penguin last seen in 1844 and an oystercatcher which disappeared around 1940, but which themselves lived on islands and not on the continent. If several avenues have been put forward to explain the disappearance of the slender-billed curlew – loss of habitat, hunting – it is difficult to draw a clear conclusion.
«The pressures that led to the extinction of the species are mostly unvalidated inferences and may never be understood and quantified.write the authors of the study, who judge “essential” that lessons be learned. “Such extinctions are an indicator of the failure of international cooperation on biodiversity conservation”they write. A few days earlier, last October, the COP16 on biodiversity in Cali, supposed to advance the obligations of the nations of the world in terms of nature protection, ended in a resounding failure, particularly on the question of financing.
Fears surrounding the preservation of the slender-billed curlew are old. As early as 1912, scientists noticed that it was declining, shortly after the discovery of the first potential nests, and the possibility of its extinction was mentioned as early as the 1940s. Despite this, it was not until the end of the 1980s that the bird is classified as threatened.
“It is crucial to understand the importance of the alarm signal represented by the extinction of the slender-billed curlew, because it could usher in a long series of macabre events if we do not act”declared Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, president of the LPO. “Animals that were once common like sparrows, swallows or hedgehogs are now seeing their populations collapse”he underlined in a press release, “We urgently need to wake up!”
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