Researchers from the St?nford Center for Conservation Biology took into account all 9,787 living and 129 extinct bird species and examined current conservation efforts. Then they fed the enormous data into their computers along with bird distribution data, ecological functions of birds and their life histories. Then they extrapolated the results via the computer to give the ecological picture in next 100 years. The picture is not so good.
The simulation of ecosystem on the computer shows that by 2100 ten percent of all bird species will become extinct. It showed that although only 1.3 percent of bird species have disappeared since 1500, the global number of individual birds has been reduced by 20 percent to 25 percent. The results were published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.
This is not good news as extinction of birds denies the ecosystem of crucial services by birds such as decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal etc.
The imbalance created in the ecosystem will affect everyone including us. One such glaring example is of India. Around 35,000 to 50,000 people died of rabies in 1997 as stray dog and rat populations exploded after the decline of vultures.
The results go hand in hand with World Conservation Union?s report saying that 12 percent of all bird species were threatened with extinction. They had also reported that one-fourth of the world’s mammals, a third of amphibians and 42 percent of all turtles and tortoises are on the brink of extinction.