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Posts Tagged ‘bird’

Groundbreaking work will help Africa’s biodiversity combat climate change

Pioneering research to help biodiversity survive the impacts of climate change across Africa has been announced at a workshop in Kigali, Rwanda and hosted by the Association pour la Conservation de la Nature au Rwanda (BirdLife in Rwanda) on behalf of the BirdLife Africa Partnership. The work brings together the BirdLife Africa Partnership, RSPB, Durham University (UK), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and is funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

The project has mapped the current and future distributions of all bird species on mainland Africa by using climate change models to determine the distance and direction of shifts for each species in the future.

A particular emphasis of the work is understanding how well the Important Bird Areas (IBAs) network in Africa can sustain the continent’s bird with future climate change. Dr Julius Arinaitwe, BirdLife International’s Regional IBA Manager for Africa, said “There are very few plans to protect biodiversity from the effects of climate change anywhere in the world. BirdLife International is leading the drive to develop strategies to protect our unique wildlife for future generations.”

“BirdLife International is leading the drive to develop strategies to protect our unique wildlife for future generations” —Dr Julius Arinaitwe, BirdLife’s Regional IBA Manager for Africa

Dr Steve Willis, a lecturer at Durham University’s Environmental Change Research Group, and a leading expert on climate change modelling, said “We have modelled the possible future distributions of all Africa’s birds and the results are worrying – many species are projected to suffer a reduction in range size and a small proportion may go extinct completely.”

More detailed analysis is being carried out within the Albertine Rift region of Africa to identify actions that will increase the resilience of the IBA network to future climate change.

The workshop in Rwanda brings together governments, academic institutions, NGOs and local community from Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which are included within the Albertine Rift mountains complex.

Dr Willis commented: “In the Albertine Rift, our models project that species will move upwards altitudinally, and clearly the higher up a mountain you go, the less land area there is. We need to start acting now to prevent these unique species disappearing altogether.”

“The main challenge is to try to protect the birds where they are now and at the same time to help them to follow a shifting climate. We need to start planning their conservation in areas where they currently do not even occur. The problems are huge but we cannot simply sit back and watch our natural heritage disappear”, Dr Arinaitwe added.

Important Bird Areas are essential for the livelihoods of many people in Africa, and are the backbone of the tourism industry, a major source of revenue for African economies. Most of these areas are also key reservoirs for water and pollinators and so their protection is an important component of adaptation to climate change in other fields such as agriculture, demography, energy, and urbanisation.

Source: BirdLife International

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Birds migrate earlier, but some may be left behind as the climate warms rapidly

Many birds are arriving earlier each spring as temperatures warm along the East Coast of the United States. However, the farther those birds journey, the less likely they are to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate.

Scientists at Boston University and the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences analyzed changes in the timing of spring migrations of 32 species [mehr...]

Climate change could severely affect the energy budget of migratory birds

Melissa Bowlin and Martin Wikelski investigated how much energy Swainson’s thrushes (see picture on left) are using at different wind velocities by having the bird fly in a wind chamber (see picture to the right). Below, Melissa describes their main results:

In an article recently published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE, Martin Wikelski and I showed that [mehr...]

UN conference hails Natura 2000 the world’s most ambitious nature protection system

Healthy ecosystems and a continuous network of these ecosystems across large regions are essential for the ability of species to adapt to changing climates. Because we depend on many functions of ecosystems such as clean water and air, and carbon sequestration, nature protection is nowadays an essential part of adaptation to climate change. Biodiversity protection is [mehr...]

The IUCN Red List 2008: Climate change and continental drift

Climate change has become firmly established as an accelerant to many of the factors which have put one in eight of the world’s birds at risk of extinction, today’s publication of the 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species of birds has found. Long-term drought and sudden extreme weather are putting additional stress on the pockets of habitat that many threatened [mehr...]