STATE OF INDIA’S BIRDS REPORT
WHY IN NEWS ?
- According to recently released SoIB report, birds living in open habitat seeing declining trend.
ABOUT STATE OF INDIA’S BIRDS REPORT:
- The State of India’s Birds report was created to assess the conservation status of the majority of species that regularly occur in the country.
- The report contains a brief outline of the methods used to come up with the State of India’s Birds.
- The SoIB 2023 is a first-of-its-kind collaborative effort of 13 government and non-government organisations, including the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), Wildlife Institute of India (WII), and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), Worldwide Fund for Nature–India (WWF–India) among others, which evaluates the overall conservation status of the most regularly occurring bird species in India.
- The primary data used in this report is the 30+ million observations uploaded by Indian birdwatchers to eBird, an online birding notebook.
- Data on eBird is freely available for research, education and conservation.
- The data from bird watchers observations was combined with supporting information for each species — including their taxonomic grouping, their habitat, migration, endemicity and diet — to create the summaries in the report.
FINDINGS OF THE REPORT:
- Among the 338 bird species studied in India, 60% have shown long-term decline.
- Out of 359 species evaluated for current annual trend, 40% have shown declined.
- The bird assessment report, released for the second time after 2020, says generalist species like shy Prinia, Rock Pigeon, Asian Koel, and Indian Peafowl have increased dramatically.
- Other common species like the Baya Weaver and Pied Bushchat are relatively stable.
- It lists 178 bird species in the country as being of “High Priority” for immediate conservation action. These include migratory wetland birds like the Ruddy shelduck, and resident species such as the Indian courser.
- The SoIB 2023 notes that birds endemic to the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot have rapidly declined in India over the past few decades.
SYLLABUS: PRELIMS, CURRENT AFFAIRS
