Bird species that live in their natural habitats can help zoos learn how to manage those in captivity. Likewise, birds living in captivity can inform conservation for wild birds, new research has shown. Both can help educate the public on threats facing bird species and encourage human behaviour change.
Two decades of surveys of marbled murrelets on the west coast of the United States shows that these elusive seabirds are impacted by changing ocean conditions and the loss of old forest. Conservation actions must, therefore, take into account factors that influence both marine food resources and terrestrial nesting habitat.
Many migratory bird species are facing global declines. A new study has examined how climate change and changes to land cover are driving those declines, and states that conservation efforts must be directed in the regions they inhabit throughout the year.
Researchers in California have discovered an interplay between 3 species – due to invasive mice on the Farallon Islands are causing migrating burrowing owls to remain on the islands to eat them. But when the mice population crashes, they switch to preying upon the endangered ashy storm-petrel.
The koloa, the only endemic duck remaining on the main Hawaiian Islands, is threatened by inbreeding with feral mallards. But a new study has found that its genetic diversity is high and conservation efforts have been successful.
DNA samples from museum specimens have again proved useful in discovering what conservation actions can help endangered species. For the critically endangered regent honeyeater, the answer is to protect its Australian habitat.
Scientists trying to save endangered species are finding help in museum collections. It has been shown that using DNA specimens from old specimens to understand evolution and threats to their survival.
White-tailed sea eagles in Germany were tested for the stress hormone corticosterone, levels of which were particularly high in birds nesting close to roads and paths. This has implications for tourist use in areas of high eagle density.
New research has found that habitat loss is a major concern for hundreds of Australian bird species, threatened as well as non-threatened, and south-eastern Australia has been the worst affected.
New Zealand has a long history of bird extinctions caused by human activity. Scientists have estimated that it would take 50 million years to recover lost bird species, and if birds currently under threat are allowed to go extinct, it would take 10 million years to recover them.