The mass drowning of emperor penguin chicks as sea ice is melted by the climate crisis has led the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to declare the species officially in danger of extinction. Emperor penguins rely on “fast” ice – sea ice that is firmly attached to the coast – for nine months […]
Tag: birdlife international
Half of seabirds are declining. Protecting marine flyways could help save them
Animals that cross borders often encounter conservation systems that stop at them. Migratory species move through jurisdictions with little regard for political boundaries, relying on habitats spread across large distances and governed by different rules. The result is patchy protection, overlapping threats, and declining populations. Seabirds make this problem clear. They range across entire ocean […]
Shorebird populations drop globally, some by a third: Report
Sixteen shorebird species have been reclassified to higher threat categories as the global population of migratory shorebirds across the world saw a substantial decline, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Conservation partnership BirdLife International, which helps examine the status of the world’s birds for the IUCN Red List, […]
Lebanon’s Migratory Birds Are Dying for TikTok Likes
On Mount Terbol in northern Lebanon, shell casings scatter across meadows, marking a grim scene for the millions of migratory birds traveling one of the busiest routes between Africa and Eurasia. This natural corridor, shaped by harsh winds, forces birds to fly low, making them easy targets for local poachers. Michel Sawan, director of the […]
Haradh is Heating Up! Prime Fall Birding in Saudi’s Eastern Province
Yesterday Adam Harris and I made the two-hour run from Al Ahsa to one of the best areas in the Eastern Province for finding an interesting array of desert, grassland, and migratory birds. We arrived to Haradh just past seven and headed directly to the pivot field where last year we had seen our primary […]
Massacre on Cyprus. Researchers call for a crack down on poachers who lure millions of birds to their deaths on the Mediterranean island with recordings of their own songs.
Millions of birds like the Sardinian warbler (above) and the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) have been migrating through the region for a long time. And, each year for many years, poachers on Cyprus have been trapping and killing them illegally. The slaughter is now said to have reached “industrial levels.” A study just published by The […]
Help Needed in Saudi: The Saudi Birding Community’s Effort to Track Down a Tagged Egyptian Vulture
The weekend before last, Yoav Perlman forwarded the following email from Ron Efrat, a researcher in the wider region studying Egyptian Vultures, to Jem Babbington and me and asked if we might use our contacts here in Saudi to track down the missing vulture. I opened the link in Google Maps and realized that the […]
Champions of the Flyway – final days
After all COTF teams handed in their lists and we got everything sorted for the awards ceremony, I had time for few hours of sleep. But I could not sleep in on my last morning in Eilat, especially with so many sites I had no time to visit this week. Dawn found me in Holland […]