Scientists are continuing their search for more than 120 bird species that may or may not be extinct, and they’re asking for your help in finding them.
The ubiquity of smartphones has led to an explosion of data for birdwatchers and researchers in the form of apps that allow amateur birdwatchers to photograph and catalogue the birds they see. With so much data available, a group of ornithologists decided to analyse it to see which species were missing.
Researchers from the American Bird Conservancy and its UK affiliate collected more than 42 million photographs, audio recordings and videos of birds that had been uploaded to a citizen scientist app. Frontiers in Ecology and the EnvironmentThe team found that 144 bird species have not been seen for more than 10 years. The analysis was completed two years ago, during which time many species have been discovered in the wild or under human protection, or have undergone taxonomic reclassification. In total, 126 of the studied species are still missing.
That doesn’t mean the bird is extinct. In fact, researchers say that only 62% of birds that are no longer seen are endangered. Instead, these species are classified as “lost” species. The 2022 paper explains that there is no official definition of a lost species, but that it is a species that has “simply disappeared from science’s radar” because it has not been seen in the wild or in captivity in a zoo or other artificial space for more than 10 years. Lost species are often endangered and have a habit of reappearing, although this is very rare.
“Birds are the best-documented group of animals on the planet, and it’s testament to how beloved birds are that only around 1% of the world’s bird species have escaped recording in the past decade,” Cameron Rutt, ABC’s lost birds science coordinator and co-author of the paper, said in a statement. “But within that 1% there are many highly threatened species that haven’t been recorded for decades. Finding these birds is essential to prevent them from going extinct.”
The study confirms what ABC has known for some time: In 2021, the organization called on birdwatchers to help them find the 10 rarest bird species on Earth that could be classified as extinct. The following year, one of those birds, the Santa Marta sabre-winged hawk, was spotted in northern Colombia, The New York Times reported.
Along with helping to identify lost species, citizen scientists could be the key to finding them again, said John C. Mittermeyer, director of ABC’s Search for Lost Birds.
“It’s a bit of a detective story trying to figure out why these birds went missing and then find them,” he says. “Some of the species on the list are very difficult or impossible to find, while others turn up relatively quickly if you’re in the right places. Regardless of the situation, working closely with local people and citizen scientists is the best way to find the missing birds and initiate conservation efforts to stop these species from going missing again.”
The phenomenon of extinction is not limited to birds: since 2017, Global Wildlife Conservation has compiled a list of 2,200 extinct species from around the world. Since its inception, only 13 of these species have been discovered.
