Threat reduction must be coupled with targeted recovery programmes to conserve global bird diversity
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Ambitious international commitments have been made to preserve biodiversity, with the goal of preventing extinctions and maintaining ecosystem resilience, yet the efficacy of large-scale protection for preventing near-term extinctions remains unclear. Here, we used a trait-based approach to show that global actions—such as the immediate abatement of all threats across at least half of species ranges for ~10,000 bird species—will only prevent half of the projected species extinctions and functional diversity loss attributable to current and future threats in the next 100 years. Nonetheless, targeted recovery programmes prioritizing the protection of the 100 most functionally unique threatened birds could avoid 68% of projected functional diversity loss. Actions targeting ‘habitat loss and degradation’ will prevent the greatest number of species extinctions and proportion of functional diversity loss relative to other drivers of extinction, whereas control of ‘hunting and collection’ and ‘disturbance and accidental mortality’ would save fewer species but disproportionately boost functional richness. These findings show that conservation of avian diversity requires action partitioned across all drivers of decline and highlight the importance of understanding and mitigating the ecological impacts of species extinctions that are predicted to occur even under optimistic levels of conservation action.
Date Issued
2025-08-01
Date Acceptance
2025-05-11
Citation
Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2025, 9 (8), pp.1499-1511
ISSN
2397-334X
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1499
End Page
1511
Journal / Book Title
Nature Ecology & Evolution
Volume
9
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2025-06-24