Large raptors, together with many species of eagle, are declining at alarming charges exterior of protected areas in Africa, finds a new report.
Populations of 10 species with a physique mass of greater than 1.3kg have plummeted by 80 per cent over a interval of 30 years, with these of one other 11 species halving throughout the identical time interval.
As a end result, the African hawk-eagle, designated as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List, needs to be reclassified as Critically Endangered, whereas Beaudouin’s snake-eagle ought to go from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered, experiences the paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Bateleurs, martial eagles and secretarybirds all suffered 80 per cent declines too.
The analysis was carried out by counting raptors alongside highway transects in Mali, Burkino Faso and Niger in West Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Botswana and South Africa.
One of the co-authors of the report, Dr Darcy Ogada, Africa program director on the Peregrine Fund, says the dimensions of the declines are stunning however not shocking given the tempo of improvement in international locations akin to Kenya and on-going droughts impacting prey availability.
The scale of the declines are stunning however not shocking given the tempo of improvement.
Roads and transmission traces each have a large detrimental impact. Roadkill attracts carrion eaters akin to vultures and eagles, which might then grow to be victims themselves, whereas birds get electrocuted on the traces or collide with pylons.
Another co-author, Dr Phil Shaw, an honorary analysis fellow on the University of St Andrews, stated he hoped the findings would lead to a lot of Africa’s massive raptors having their designations modified by the IUCN.
This did take place when Shaw and Ogada revealed a paper revealing catastrophic crashes in vulture numbers in 2016. “That attracted a lot of funding into looking at ways of bringing back populations or protecting them better,” Shaw says.
Whether that occurs with this latest paper stays to be seen. “The priority list in Africa consists of rhinos at the top, elephants right next to them and then lions and other big cats,” Ogada says. “My instinct tells me that close to 95 per cent of all funding for wildlife conservation goes to those top layers.”
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