India’s bird species suffer long-term decline

Indian bird species are declining at an alarming rate. This was one of the crucial takeaways at the recent United Nations 13th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species held in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India.

The ‘State of India’s Birds 2020’ report is the first comprehensive assessment of the distribution range, trends in abundance, and conservation status for most of the bird species that regularly occur in India.

The study is an evaluation of the long-term and current trends, distribution range size, and the overall conservation status of 867 Indian bird species. Stating that with their ubiquity and ecological importance, birds are excellent indicators of the state of our natural world and are potent cultural symbols of nature, the study points out that this national-level assessment of birds is a significant step forward in the monitoring and conservation of India’s rich and varied biodiversity.

Worldwide, common and widespread species are declining; but in India, lack of information has meant that conservation attention has been focussed on only a few species (usually large, charismatic and threatened).

The report fills this gap by using over 10 million observations uploaded to the eBird platform by more than 15,500 birdwatchers to evaluate the distribution range size of 867 Indian birds, and their trends in abundance in both the long term (over 25+ years) and currently (past 5 years). Using these three measures, plus information from the IUCN Red List of global threat status, this report places Indian species into Low, Moderate and High categories of Conservation Concern for India.

A large number of species that are thought to be common and widespread find themselves as of High Conservation Concern. The report lists the conservation concern among Indian bird species as High in 101 species, Moderate in 319 and Low in 442.

This first-of-its-kind nationwide study of India’s birds has found that among the species for which long-term trends could be established, over half have declined since 2000, of which 22% were declining strongly. Among the 146 species for which annual trends could be estimated, 80% were found to be declining, with close to 50% declining strongly. Adequate data on how birds fared over a period of over 25 years (long term trend) are available only for 261 species. Current annual trends are calculated over a five year period.

Experts say that the key findings of the report are a major reason for concern. Over a fifth of India’s bird diversity has suffered strong long-term declines over a 25-year period. More recent annual trends point to a drastic 80% loss among several common birds. For every bird species that was found to be increasing in numbers over the long term, 11 have suffered losses, some catastrophically. Of 101 species categorised as being of High Conservation Concern, many endemics were confirmed as suffering current decline.

Among widely known species, the common sparrow, long seen as declining in urban spaces, has a stable population overall, although they have become rare in cities and urban areas. Raptors overall are in decline, with ‘open country’ species suffering the most. Migratory shorebirds, along with gulls and terns, seem to have declined the most among water birds. Many other common species have declined. Birds that eat invertebrates have declined as a group.

The report summary does raise some hope too though. 126 species have stable or increasing trends over the last 25+ years. Species like the House Sparrow and Indian Peafowl are doing well. Some globally Near Threatened species, including Black-headed Ibis, have stable or increasing populations and therefore are classified as of Low Conservation Concern for India.

The report offers several recommendations. It suggests that policymakers and managers update global and national priorities using conservation assessments from this report. More attention should be paid to fund conservation efforts on High Concern species and habitats where species have declined. The governments needs to support monitoring efforts by citizen scientists and researchers.

It further asks researchers to promote collaborations between researchers and the public at large and to initiate efforts to better understand neglected species. There is a need to investigate reasons for decline.

The report also requests the public to document birds seen and upload to a public platform. Birdwatchers among the public must also help fill information gaps in areas with less birdwatching, spread the message of birdwatching, and initiate regional monitoring efforts.