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Six of Africa’s 11 vul­ture species — the continent’s largest and most recog­nis­able birds of prey — are now at a higher risk of extinc­tion, accord­ing to the lat­est assess­ment of birds for the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, car­ried out by BirdLife Inter­na­tional — an IUCN Red List partner.

The main causes of the drop in African vul­ture pop­u­la­tions are thought to be indis­crim­i­nate poi­son­ings, where the birds are drawn to poi­soned baits, use of vul­ture body parts in tra­di­tional med­i­cine, and delib­er­ate tar­get­ing by poach­ers, as the pres­ence of vul­tures can alert author­i­ties to ille­gally killed big game carcasses.

“How­ever, now we are becom­ing aware of the sheer scale of the declines involved, there is still just enough time for con­ser­va­tion­ists to work with law-​makers, faith-​based organ­i­sa­tions, gov­ern­ment agen­cies and local peo­ple, to make sure there is a future for these mag­nif­i­cent scav­engers,” said Arinaitwe.

World­wide, 40 more bird species are now clas­si­fied as hav­ing a higher risk of extinc­tion in the 2015 Red List. Besides the vul­tures, these include many wad­ing shore­birds, and other iconic species like Hel­meted Horn­bill, Swift Par­rot, Atlantic Puf­fin, and Euro­pean Turtle-​dove.

Con­versely, 23 species of birds have been down­graded to lower threat cat­e­gories. In some cases, this reflects a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how they are far­ing, but some species have under­gone remark­able recov­er­ies as a result of con­ser­va­tion action, includ­ing Sey­chelles War­bler and Chatham Petrel.

“Vul­tures and other birds play a crit­i­cal role in main­tain­ing healthy ecosys­tems,” saidSimon Stu­art, Chair of the IUCN Species Sur­vival Com­mis­sion. “Their decline can have seri­ous knock-​on effects on other species and the many ben­e­fits pro­vided by nature. While it is encour­ag­ing to see some pos­i­tive out­comes of con­ser­va­tion action, this update is an impor­tant wake-​up call, show­ing that urgent efforts need to be taken to pro­tect these species.”

The IUCN Red List is the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion source on the con­ser­va­tion sta­tus of plant and ani­mal species, and BirdLife Inter­na­tional is the offi­cial author­ity for birds.

Data on The IUCN Red List web­site has not yet been updated. For a full list of all the changes, see:
http://​www​.birdlife​.org/​g​l​o​b​a​l​l​y​-​t​h​r​e​a​t​e​n​e​d​-​b​i​r​d​-​f​o​r​u​m​s​/
For the new Red List assess­ments and fact­sheets, go to:
http://​www​.birdlife​.org/​d​a​t​a​z​o​n​e​/​s​p​e​c​i​e​s​/​s​e​a​r​c​h

(Source: IUCN Inter­na­tional news release, 29.10.2015)