A report on India’s bird population has painted a grim picture for many of the country’s species.
The State of India’s Birds (SoIB) report – published on Friday – showed worrisome declines, with 178 species of wild birds identified as needing immediate priority for conservation.
The report analysed data collated from India’s birdwatchers and conservation organisations on 942 bird species, including several previously thought to be common and widespread.
It recommended an urgent reassessment of the status of 14 of these species, including the Indian roller, which is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being of “least concern”.
Ding Li Yong, the Asia advocacy and policy manager for BirdLife International, said: “The SoIB report brings the status of many species into perspective, at nearly a continental scale.”
Yong, who was not affiliated with the report, added: “The understanding that this report provides will help conservationists formulate strategies to save species.”
Approximately 1,350 bird species have been recorded in India.
The researchers, in a collaboration of 13 conservation and research organisations, analysed the 942 species for which they had enough data to determine their conservation priority as either high, moderate or low.
The work was based on more than 30m field observations, made by nearly 30,000 birdwatchers in India and logged in the online database eBird.
It found that nearly 60% of the 348 species studied over a period of 25 years showed long-term declines, and 40% of the 359 species assessed over the short term (since 2015) had also declined.
The report also stated that raptor and duck populations had declined the most, while numbers of several common species, such as the great grey shrike, were also falling.
Migratory birds were found to be declining more rapidly than non-migratory ones. Categorised by diet, carnivorous, insectivorous and grain-eating birds were found to have declined more rapidly than fruit- and nectar-eating types.
Birds in specific habitats like grasslands and shrublands, classified in India as wastelands, had also declined more rapidly than those in open habitats.
The exact causes of the falls in species populations are not yet clearly understood, but the report pointed to land-use changes, urbanisation, ecosystem degradation, monocultures, infrastructure development, pollution and climate breakdown as threats. The publishers of the report called for further research into the causes.
It is the second edition of the SoIB report, after the first was published in 2020. The 2023 report highlights four priority species requiring conservation attention in each of India’s 36 states and union territories.
For species listed under moderate conservation priority, more work was required to identify early warning signals, while those in the low conservation priority were not to be ignored.
“We need to work to keep common species common,” said Suhel Quader, of the Nature Conservation Foundation, one of the groups involved.
The report did find 217 species that were stable or increasing in numbers. Feral rock pigeons, Asian koel and Indian peafowl were found to be doing well, but the impact of their increasing numbers on other, more vulnerable species is not known.
Common birds like the Baya weaver and pied bushchat were also found to be relatively stable.
The publishers of the report placed great importance on public involvement, but they noted that more research and data gathering were needed for rare and nocturnal birds, which are not generally recorded by birdwatchers.
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