Presenting a depressing scenario of avian wealth, the IUCN Red List 2008 features India prominently among the ten countries in the world having the largest number of threatened species of birds. Brazil tops the list with 141 while India is ranked seventh with 78, reports the BirdLife International, the Cambridge based global alliance of conservation organisations and an authority for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Of the 78 threatened species in India, which includes migratory species, 13 are categorized as Critically Endangered (facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild), 10 as Endangered (facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild) and the remaining as Vulnerable (facing high risk of extinction in the wild). Two of the species, Baer’s Pochard Aythya baeri and Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus, have been uplisted, from Vulnerable to Endangered and from Endangered to Critically Endangered respectively. The decline of the Pochards’s population was traced to wetland destruction while that of the charismatic Sandpiper’s to habitat loss in its breeding, passage and wintering grounds and effects of climate change. New research has shown the Yellow-breasted Bunting Emberiza aureola to be rarer than it was believed. Formerly classified, as Near Threatened it has been uplisted to Vulnerable. Following the evaluation of its population size, the Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata was found to be rarer than generally assumed, uplisting it to Near threatened. Likewise, following the splitting of the newly recognized species, the populations of Spelaeornis chocolatinus Long-tailed Wrenbabbler are small enough to warrant uplisting it to Near Threatened status, from the previous status of Least Concern. The decline of the populations of Blackish-breasted Babbler Sphenocichla humei and Chevron-breasted Babbler Sphenocichla roberti were traced to shifting cultivation, logging and the reducing forest cover. Due to lack of reliable information on its status, Andaman Crake Rallina canningi was formerly classified as Data Deficient. New research has shown it to be somewhat rare. Consequently, it is listed at Near Threatened. Elsewhere, the 2008 Red List makes grim reading with 1,226 species of bird in the world now threatened and eight species newly uplisted to Critically Endangered, the highest threat category. On the national front too, the picture is grim with an addition of two species to the list as against the list of 2007 totaling to 76.

Source: Buceros, Vol. 13 (1), (2008), pp 3-4

Description on the new IUCN Red List categories and criteria:

In late 1994, new criteria for the identification and categorisation of threatened species were adopted by IUCN (IUCN SSC 1994). BirdLife International played an integral role in the development of these criteria over several years, and in the course of 1993–1994, used them to determine the species in Birds to watch 2 (Collar et al. 1994). An outline of the criteria is given in the Introduction to Birds to watch 2 along with a review of certain phenomena associated with them. In the process of their official ratification, however, the criteria were very slightly altered from the working set that BirdLife had been using. We present below a brief account of these criteria, but warn that anyone seriously planning to use them needs to refer to the official booklet (IUCN SSC 1994) or to the following web site: http://iucn.org/themes/ssc/site indx.htm The following categories and criteria are reproduced almost wholly verbatim from IUCN SSC (1994). Several definitions needed to interpret the criteria are appended.

Critically Endangered (CR)

Endangered (EN)

Vulnerable (VU)

Lower Risk (LR)

Data Deficient (DD)

Not Evaluated (NE)

Dendrogram

Recommended citation: Islam, M. Z. and Rahmani, A. R. (2002) Threatened Birds of India. Buceros Vol. 7, No. 1 & 2, 2002. Compiled from Threatened Birds of Asia. Birdlife International Red Data Book (2001). Cambridge, U.K.: BirdLife International

Reference: BirdLife International (Website: www.birdlife.org)