The slender-billed curlew is the first bird species in the modern world to be considered extinct on the European mainland. This was announced by the Union for the Conservation of Nature and Biodiversity (Nabu) in Lower Saxony, Germany. This is the first bird species on the European mainland declared extinct in the modern era..

This was reported by Zeit..

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“The fate of the slender-billed curlew should make us all reconsider the value of our natural environment and do everything possible to protect the remaining species,” said Martin Rummler, bird conservation expert. According to the environmental organization, the main reasons for the extinction of the Eurasian Accentor are the destruction of coastal wetlands, intensive use and drainage of marshes and wetlands. The cause of extinction is considered to be climate change, land plowing and other human activities..

“The destruction of pristine ecosystems along the migration routes of this species underscores the importance of international cooperation in conservation,” Nabu said. The loss of this species shows that species extinction is happening right before our eyes, said Holger Buschmann, regional chairman of Nabu in Lower Saxony.

The numbers of most species of shorebirds are in sharp decline due to the effects of human activity, such as climate change and destruction of coastlines, lack of breeding sites and migration. Even once common species are facing problems. It is not surprising that at the end of October last year the International Union for Conservation of Nature increased the conservation status of a number of shorebird species.

Since the end of the 20th century, the slender-billed curlew has been considered an endangered species.. The last officially recorded time the bird was seen in Morocco was in 1995.. A few years ago, the probability of extinction of a bird was 96%, while a species can be considered extinct if this figure is 90%..

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Let's remember that Swedish scientists said that people are responsible for the death of three quarters of flightless bird species.. According to them, at the moment there could be 226 similar species living on Earth, which is almost four times more than in reality.

Flightless birds were quite common throughout the Cenozoic era. But with the advent of people, their situation changed. People not only hunted birds, but also introduced cats, rats and other invasive species into their habitats.

In a new study, scientists compiled a list of all species that went extinct from the late Pleistocene (126 thousand years ago) to the present day and separately noted those who forgot how to fly. At the same time, scientists did not take into account the causes of death of birds; they took it as an axiom that in the vast majority of cases people were to blame.

In total, the authors counted 581 extinct bird species from 85 families, which is only about 5% of the total diversity of the class (more than ten thousand species). 166 species (29%) could not fly or did so poorly - for comparison, there are 60 species of flightless birds living on Earth today.