Up to date pink listing raises pink flags for Sri Lanka’s birds, particularly endemics
- Sri Lanka has printed its newest evaluation of the conservation standing of birds, exhibiting a worrying enhance within the variety of species thought of threatened because the final evaluation was printed in 2012.
- The evaluation covers 244 species, each endemic and migratory, and lists 19 as critically endangered, 48 as endangered, and 14 as weak — the three “threatened” classes.
- It highlights as a key risk the lack of habitat on account of local weather change, which might shrink the appropriate vary for mountain species by as much as 90%.
- The assessors have additionally known as for aligning the nationwide assessments for endemic species — these discovered solely in Sri Lanka — with the worldwide pink listing administered by the IUCN, with the latter figuring out solely eight of those species as threatened, whereas the previous lists 20.
COLOMBO — When Uditha Hettige began out doing area excursions in 1990, looking for Sri Lanka’s wealthy chook life, he would go to Bodhinagala Forest Reserve within the nation’s west every week.
Overnighting at a close-by faculty, he recollects simply how frequent it was to listen to the decision of species just like the Sri Lanka frogmouth (Batrachostomus moniliger) and to come across the endemic green-billed coucal (Centropus chlororhynchos) in house gardens near the forest.
“However the forest now has receded by a few mile in comparison with what it was three many years in the past and now I hardly discover a frogmouth even inside the forest,” Hettige, thought of Sri Lanka’s main wildlife tour information and a member of the Ceylon Hen Membership (CBC), tells Mongabay. “The green-billed coucals are solely discovered nearer to the forest,” he provides.
He says he’s noticed this type of transformation in a lot of the ecosystems he now visits, giving a sign of how habitat loss and forest degradation are impacting birds.
‘Lack of enchancment’
That is mirrored in a newly launched authorities publication on the conservation standing of native birds, also called the Nationwide Crimson Record. It reveals that birds which can be habitat specialists — those who have developed to thrive in a selected sort of habitat, particularly endemic species present in lowland rainforests and montane habitats — are extra weak.
Twenty of Sri Lanka’s 34 recognized endemic chook species — these discovered nowhere else on Earth — at the moment are threatened, based on the listing. Ten endemic species have seen their conservation standing worsen from the final time the listing was up to date, in 2012: one which was beforehand thought of of least concern is now close to threatened; two have gone from close to threatened to the threatened class of weak; and 7 have gone from weak to endangered.
“The general development regarding endemic species is unsatisfactory because it reveals the dearth of enchancment within the standing for almost all of the species whereas some endemics have additional deteriorated in standing in simply in a single decade,” says Devaka Weerakoon, chief technical adviser on fauna for the Nationwide Crimson Record and a senior professor of environmental sciences on the College of Colombo.
Local weather change-driven habitat loss
Sri Lanka is house to 522 chook species, lots of them migratory. The pink listing evaluation seems solely on the 244 species that breed on the island. It lists 19 of those species as being critically endangered, 48 as endangered, and 14 as weak.
The report warns of climate-driven adjustments in habitats additional shrinking the appropriate vary for already threatened and endemic chook populations significantly within the island’s moist and montane zones.
A 2020 examine confirmed {that a} rise in temperature of two° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) would shift chook communities in Sri Lanka and neighboring India’s Western Ghats upward by 400 meters (1,300 toes). This is able to considerably scale back the appropriate habitat accessible to high-elevation, threatened endemic species by as much as 74%, the examine mentioned. It recognized probably the most closely impacted species because the yellow-eared bulbul (Pycnonotus penicillatus), Sri Lanka whistling thrush (Myophonus blighi), dull-blue flycatcher (Eumyias sordidus) and Sri Lanka bush warbler (Elaphrornis palliseri) — all endemic and which might see as much as a 90% discount of their climate-suitable vary by the yr 2080.
Given this prospect of local weather change-driven habitat loss, Weerakoon says it’s necessary to have a species conservation plan that particularly targets preserving the birds’ vary.
“It’s troublesome to establish the precise nature of those inhabitants developments on account of lack of long-term monitoring packages in place to trace chook inhabitants adjustments in Sri Lanka,” Weerakoon tells Mongabay.
World and nationwide disparities
The long-awaited publication of the pink listing, for which the evaluation was carried out in 2021 and coordinated by the Ministry of Surroundings’s Biodiversity Secretariat, drew technical assist from the greater than 30 specialists who sit on the Nationwide Hen Skilled Panel.
“We gathered extra information from the knowledgeable panel than in 2012 together with each printed and unpublished information on the distribution of birds of Sri Lanka, which had been utilized in mapping their conservation standing,” says Salindra Kasun Dayananda of the Discipline Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka (FOGSL), a key contributor and analysis guide for the newly up to date pink listing.
Sri Lanka has excessive ranges of endemism throughout species, significantly reptiles and amphibians, however solely a small variety of endemic birds. Meaning a lot of the 244 assessed species are additionally present in different nations, the place their nationwide conservation standing, and the worldwide pink listing standing, could fluctuate from Sri Lanka’s.
However among the many Sri Lankan endemics, there’s a disparity between the worldwide and nationwide pink listing standing: solely eight species are listed as threatened on the IUCN Crimson Record, in comparison with 20 on Sri Lanka’s pink listing.
“The nationwide statuses are evaluated by native researchers and the info must be extra correct,” Dayananda tells Mongabay. “This was completed by native specialists by analyzing information units and their field-based experience. The pink listing group intends to iron out this disparity.”
Among the many assessed migratory species, 14 are nationally listed as critically endangered. Eleven of then happen within the nation’s north, together with eight that breed in Adam’s Bridge Marine Nationwide Park. This info can be utilized for the safety of this necessary habitat, Dayananda says.
Commending the work completed by the pink listing assessors, Sarath Kotagama, emeritus professor of ecology on the College of Colombo and a pioneering Sri Lankan ornithologist, says it’s key to contemplate not simply the threats to the birds, but additionally how uncommon they’re.
“It’s necessary to grasp whether or not these species are uncommon or turned uncommon on account of human exercise, which drove these conservation selections,” he tells Mongabay.
Citations:
The Nationwide Crimson Record 2021 — Conservation standing of the birds of Sri Lanka (2021). Biodiversity Secretariat, Ministry of Surroundings, Sri Lanka.
Sreekar, R., Koh, L. P., Mammides, C., Corlett, R. T., Dayananda, S., Goodale, U. M., … Goodale, E. (2020). Drivers of chook beta range within the Western Ghats–Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot are scale dependent: Roles of land use, local weather, and distance. Oecologia, 193(4), 801-809. doi:10.1007/s00442-020-04671-3
Banner picture of birds in flight close to Adam’s Bridge Marine Nationwide Park, the place eight critically endangered chook species breed, courtesy of Gehan Rajiv.
