Humans Have Driven 469 Bird Species to Extinction Due to Thousands of Years of Hunting

New findings which Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science released show a great number of bird species are extinct with humans being the major cause, TAU said in a press release.

The researchers said some significant characteristics made birds easily available to humans and animal hunters who go in search of them for food, resulting in the extinction of 469 avian species.

Extinct Bird Species

In the last 20,000 to 50,000 years, about 10%-20% of all avian species has vanished, as per the research, released in the Journal of Biogeography.

Prof. Shai Meiri of the School of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at TAU, and Amir Fromm of the Weizmann Institute, led the study which noted that the extensive majority of the extinct species have several likenesses - they were big in size, they inhabited islands, and most of them were unable to fly.

The researchers said these features made these birds easily available to humans and other animal hunters who go in search of them for food, resulting in the extinction of 469 avian species.

The researchers showed hope that their discoveries will help avoid further bird extinction.

Also Read: Simple Steps You Can Do to Help Conserve Birds

Major Cause for Species Extinction

Meiri said: "Our study indicates that before the major extinction event of the past millennia, many more large, even giant, as well as flightless avian lived on our globe, and the diversity of birds living on islands was much greater than today."

Meiri said they hope that their discoveries can play the role of warning signals concerning bird species presently threatened with extinction, and also it is crucial to discover whether they possess similar characteristics.

But it must be recognized that conditions have changed greatly, and presently the major cause for species extinction by man is not hunting but instead it is the destruction of natural habitats.

Wildlife Protection

Israel notices great inundation of feathered visitors moving into the country yearly, as a large number of birds return to the shores of Eilat following the patterns of migration in the middle of April.

But over the last eight years, the number of birds arriving in Eilat, the southernmost tip of Israel, has sharply reduced, as per data which the International Birding and Research Center Eilat compiled, alarming experts that the rate of extinction is rising.

At the beginning of this month, Tamar Zandberg, Israel's Environmental Protection Minister made an announcement that the country would stretch wildlife protections to two kinds of birds, prohibiting turtle doves hunting for three years and prohibiting the hunting of quail entirely as experts hope to prevent the further decrease of birds' populations.

Birds are warm-blooded vertebrates and they belong to the class Aves.

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