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Topic: Double knocks, giant mice and ... 鳥盟2005年總結 (Read 1197 times) |
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Double knocks, giant mice and ... 鳥盟2005年總結
« on: Dec 28th, 2005, 3:10pm » |
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Double knocks, giant mice and the Neopolitan Mafia
http://www.birdlife.org/news/news/2005/12/2005_review.html
27-12-2005
BirdLife’s news review of 2005
The year opened with the aftermath of the Asian tsunami. BirdLife played its part in helping people affected in Important Bird Areas (IBAs), and advised that redevelopment and resettlement should avoid further damage to natural habitats, such as mangroves, which had provided protection to some coastal communities.
The year ended with the non-arrival of a natural catastrophe. Millions of wild birds flew to their wintering sites across, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas without the widely predicted outbreaks of H5N1 bird 'flu along their migration routes. "The most obvious explanation is that migrating wild birds are not spreading the disease," said Dr Michael Rands, BirdLife's Director & Chief Executive.
Community organisations set up as part of BirdLife's IBA Local Conservation Group work proved their worth in more than one of this year's natural disasters. "Site Support Groups in Malaysia and Thailand were able to get rescue and reconstruction work underway quickly after the tsunami, because they were already organised and trained," said BirdLife International Chairman Peter Schei. And when a massive earthquake struck South Asia in October, a coalition of civil society organisations in the Palas Valley, where BirdLife has worked for 15 years, played an important part in the organisation and distribution of relief supplies, and guided the efforts of aid agencies.
Ian Sinclair
One of the first ever photos of Orange-breasted Bush-shrike
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BirdLife's 2005 assessment found that 1,212 of the world's 9,775 species were globally threatened with extinction
In June, BirdLife's annual evaluation of the world's bird species found 1,212 threatened with extinction, and 788 Near Threatened – a total of exactly 2,000 species in trouble, over one-fifth of the planet's remaining 9,775 species. A number of European birds entered the list for the first time, including Roller Coracias garrulus and Dupont's Lark Chersophilus duponti. But it was not all bad news: five species were "downlisted" to lower categories of threat, including Kirtland's Warbler Dendroica kirtlandii, Seychelles Magpie-robin Copsychus sechellarum and White-tailed Eagle Haliaeetus albicilla.
New species recognised in 2005 (though not necessarily yet by BirdLife) included the Sulfur-breasted Parakeet Aratinga pintoi from the Amazon Basin, two tapaculos from the Cordillera Central mountains of Colombia, and the Iquitos Gnatcatcher Polioptila clementsi, named after James Clements, author of Birds of the World: A Checklist, who died this year.
A number of birds were seen after decades without confirmed sightings, including the distinctive endemic Peruvian race of the endangered Southern Helmeted Curassow Crax unicornis koepckeae, not recorded since 1969. In Angola, the Orange-breasted Bush-shrike Laniarius brauni and White-headed Robin-chat Cossypha heinrichi (last seen in 1957), and the Black-tailed Cisticola Cisticola melanurus (last seen in 1972), were refound.
Martjan Lammertink
The woods of Arkansas are being scoured for further signs of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
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April 2005 brought incredible news from the woods of Arkansas...
But the most sensational and controversial "rediscovery" was the Ivory-billed Woodpecker Campephilus principalis in North America. The rediscovery has split the ornithological community, with many convinced that photographic, video and audio evidence confirms the survival of the species in Arkansas, while others insist the blurry pictures and recordings of "kent" calls and double-knocks are open to other interpretations, implicating leucistic Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, snapping twigs and distant gunshots. Survey teams are currently scouring the area.
The USA lost another species at the end of 2004, with the death in Hawaii of what was probably the last Po'o-uli Melamprosops phaeosoma on earth. But this year, New Zealand has been proving that it is possible to restore fragile island ecoystems from the depredations of introduced, alien predators like rats and cats.
Sixty Stitchbirds Notiomystis cincta were transferred to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary near Wellington, on New Zealand's North Island, from the predator-free island of Tiritiri Matangi. The last time the species was found on the New Zealand mainland was in the 1880s. Captive-bred Shore Plover Thinornis novaeseelandiae will be introduced to an island off South Island early in 2006, the first in a proposed five-year series of transfers. Meanwhile, the Kakapo Strigops habroptilus, the world's largest parrot and the beneficiary of an earlier programme of transfers to predator-free islands, began breeding again on New Zealand's Codfish Island after a lapse of three years.
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香港觀鳥會 經理(項目及傳訊)
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