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One in eight bird species are at threat of extinction, but we can help them recover

In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock gave us a horror story revolving around birds — specifically, having too many of them. A report just released by conservation group BirdLife International is now painting a new horror story, centring on quite the opposite problem.

Using birds as a proxy for the state of the world's biodiversity, the study paints a grim picture of the deterioration of our natural environment. Birds work well as a litmus test for the state of the biosphere for a number of reasons, among them that birds are found in nearly all habitats around the work and are generally easy to identify and monitor.

And it's what this monitoring is showing that has BirdLife International worried, and should have us worried as well.

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The report lists 1313 bird species currently considered at threat of extinction; that amounts to one in eight species worldwide. Nearly 200 of those species are on the critically endangered list, and BirdLife states that "there has been a steady and continuing deterioration in the status of the world's birds over the last 25 years," with "species in the Pacific and ocean-going seabirds" declining the fastest.

As you might expect, countries with substantial biodiversity — like Brazil, with the Amazon rainforest — have higher numbers of threatened species (in Brazil's case, 152), but Canadian birds, though we may be doing better than many countries, are still at risk. Canada's bird population has dropped about 12 per cent since 1970 and 60 of the species that regularly breed in Canada are classified as 'at risk'.

It can be hard to picture, exactly, what birds of the world — especially when presented with huge numbers of species at risk — have to do with our day-to-day lives. However, they're not only great at their jobs as pest control and seed and pollen spreaders, but they give us a mirror to the natural world they inhabit. If there are healthy bird habitats around, with clean water and air, and sufficient numbers of healthy plants and food sources, then we have healthy birds. When we lose the support system, we lose the birds. And, unfortunately, that's what the decline in birds the BirdLife International report is showing us.

So what can we do? Well, a lot, if we want to. Canadians are famous for being proud of our country's natural beauty, and we've actually done a great job in the past of helping some of our bird species along over the past decade.

Nature Canada already protects some areas critical to our feathered friends, via the Important Bird Areas Program, but there are others that are under pressure from human activity. You can help fight the good fight in Ottawa by adding your voice to a petition to support birds in decline. You can help at home, too, by making your personal habitat more bird friendly, especially during the winter and migration seasons.

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The BirdLife World Congress 2013 is going on right now in Ottawa, bringing together people from around the world to discuss new ideas for the conservation of birds and bird habitats, and how our health, security and welfare are inextricably linked to the biodiversity that they represent. However, while they discuss the big-picture issues, we can all do our part on the small-scale to help.

(Images courtesy: Wikimedia Commons, NABCI)

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