For decades, the slender-billed curlew, a grayish-brown migratory wetland bird with a long, arched bill, has evaded detection, prompting speculation about whether the species is still out there. Now, a new study has confirmed that the species is indeed most likely extinct.
“Speaking personally it’s a source of deep sadness,” Geoff Hilton, conservation scientist at U.K.-based charity Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Mongabay by email. “I spent several years working on ways to bring this species back from the brink … I’m gutted!”
While details of the slender-billed curlew’s (Numenius tenuirostris) exact population size and breeding sites have remained hazy, the species is known to have historically bred in Central Asia and migrated to Europe and North Africa. However, the bird has likely been scarce since the mid-20th century, said Graeme Buchanan, study lead author and conservation scientist with U.K-based NGO Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).
The species was last photographed in 1995 at Merga Zerga on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. Since then, experts have speculated the bird was extinct, although the IUCN Red List still classifies it as critically endangered, based on a 2018 assessment
There was a need for a formal, quantitative assessment of the species’ status to prevent withdrawing conservation support too soon or too late, Buchanan told Mongabay.
So, following the IUCN’s framework, Buchanan and his colleagues reviewed all known sightings of the species maintained by the RSPB in a database, estimated impacts of various threats to the bird, and examined past surveys. They concluded there’s a roughly 96% probability the species is now extinct, and that it likely happened in the mid-1990s.
“I agree with the authors’ approach and so unfortunately I must agree with their conclusions,” Hilton said. “Of course, the authors do not say that the species is definitely extinct, just that it is extremely likely to be extinct.”
This is a wake-up call the conservation sector “probably didn’t need,” Hilton added. “We arguably spent too much time watching the bird’s decline and not enough actually trying to fix things,” he said. “Although that’s easy to say: it’s not clear what really we could have done that would have made a difference.”
A recent IUCN update notes that various other migratory shorebirds are now more threatened with extinction than before.
As for the slender-billed curlew, the study’s authors recommend updating the species’ IUCN status to extinct. Still, they hold out a slim hope someone might spot one of the birds again.
“If someone spots it now, get a photographic evidence,” Buchanan said. “It’s very important to have no uncertainty as to whether or not this is the species. Second, call us. We’d be delighted to be proven wrong and we could try to reinitiate conservation efforts.”
This article by Shreya Dasgupta was first published by Mongabay.com on 21 November 2024. Lead Image: Slender-billed curlew illustration by Elizabeth Gould & Edward Lear via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).
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