Kerala to have its own regional red list of birds- UPSC Daily Important Topic | 6 August 2022

Kerala to have its own regional red list of birds-

✓Kerala will soon have its own red list of birds.

✓Once it gets ready, Kerala will be the first State to have a region-specific red list of birds.

● About the  Regional Bird Red list:

✓The Kerala Bird Monitoring Collective led by Kerala Agricultural University and the Bird Count India will conduct the regional red list assessment.

✓It will be done on the basis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines

✓It will be a decentralised process like how the Kerala Bird Atlas was prepared.

● Need of such red list:

✓There are some limitations with the global IUCN red list as it is  prepared in a global context.

✓A species seen common at the global level may be a threatened species at the regional level.

✓So a regional red list is needed to conserve that species at the local level.

● Criterias under IUCN Guidelines:

✓The IUCN guidelines for preparing the red list have five main criteria.

✓The population size reduction measured over 10 years or three generations is one of the major guidelines.

✓Geographic range on the basis of extent of occurrence or area of occupancy is another.

✓Small population size and decline; very small or restricted population; and quantitative analysis indicating the probability of extinction in the wild are the other criteria.

● About Kerala Bird Atlas:

✓It was prepared between 2015 and 2020

✓It was conducted as a citizen science-driven exercise with participation of over 1,000 volunteers of the bird watching community

✓It provides a solid baseline data about distribution and abundance of various bird species in the State

✓It accounts for nearly three lakh records of 361 species, including 94 very rare species, 103 rare species, 110 common species, 44 very common species, and 10 most abundant species.

✓According to the atlas, most of the endemics are concentrated in the Western Ghats while the threatened species are cited mostly along the coast.