Scientists: Over 500 bird species will be wiped off the face of the Earth — because of human activity.

The scale of nature's destruction on our planet is accelerating. Unfortunately, nothing is changing for the better, and people are not even thinking about saving what is left of the natural world.

Yesterday I was studying a new scientific study conducted by scientists from the University of Reading. The work is large and very serious, with specialists from academic centres in the United Kingdom and Estonia taking part. The study was published on 24 June 2025, so we are among the first who can now familiarise ourselves with the results.

The study is titled “Safeguarding global avian diversity requires combining threat reduction with targeted restoration programmes”, and according to the data obtained, the scientists report an uncontrolled critical extinction of bird species worldwide.

Within the next one hundred years, more than 500 bird species will disappear from the planet. We are talking not about population declines, but about the complete extinction of specific bird species. According to scientific data, about 517 species may be erased from the face of the Earth because of human activity. To understand the scale: from 1500 to the present day, only about 160 bird species have been documented as extinct — therefore the current forecast is three times higher than the historical figures.

Scientists say that the main threat to birds is the loss of their natural habitat, i.e., human activity itself. We cut down forests, exterminate entire chains of living animals, and destroy millennia-old biogeocoenoses.

Birds are also threatened by other problems: invasive species, diseases, and environmental pollution. Scientists single out recreational hunting in particular, when people deliberately destroy animals for entertainment.

The study notes that if people were to launch large-scale conservation measures right now, we could prevent the extinction of half the species and thus at least maintain ecosystem balance. The bad news is that even in this case the other half is still doomed to extinction. Such a deep crisis has been triggered by humans in the wild.

I will quote from the study:

“Even under these ambitious and optimistic measures we predict that more than half of the projected extinctions and losses of functional diversity over the next 100 years will still occur.”

“Our conclusion that even the large-scale removal of all current and future threats will not prevent almost half of the anticipated extinctions challenges fundamental assumptions of global conservation progress indicators.”

Many species will need centuries just to recover their numbers, and even total protection of their habitat no longer guarantees the salvation of those on the brink of complete extinction. Thus, removing threats alone will not be enough; precise urgent measures are required to save the most vulnerable species in ecosystems.

I understand that to the layperson it may seem: “Well, 500 bird species will die out — so what? And over a century at that.” And here I must explain the depth of the problem.

Five hundred bird species in 100 years equates to about five bird species being erased from the Earth every year. This, in turn, provokes the so-called “domino effect”, when the extinction of a key species in ecosystems leads to the death of other related species of animals and plants along the biological chain.

On the Philippines, on the island of Cebu, for example, lives a tiny bird called the Cebu flowerpecker (Dicaeum quadricolor) — about the size of our sparrow. The male of this species is painted in four colours and is called a real jewel of the local forests! But only a handful remain; the population is already estimated at fewer than one hundred individuals. This small bird provides critically important services in ecosystems: feeding on fruit and nectar, it disperses the seeds of tropical trees. The flowerpecker swallows small berries and carries undigested seeds in its droppings. Large fruit it pecks, tears into pieces, and drops to the ground, where insects such as ants pick them up and spread the seeds further through the ecosystems.

But that is not all. The Cebu flowerpecker pollinates flowering lianas and trees, carrying pollen on its wings. Many plant species have evolved with local birds, using them as a kind of “pollination service”. And, as you have already realised, we are primarily speaking about flowering plants that later bear fruit, i.e., provide all local ecosystems with a food base.

For instance, a species of Philippine mistletoe disguises its flowers as berries, and when birds come to feast and bite into the camouflaged flowers, they begin to burst, creating a cloud of pollen that settles on the birds. Thus further pollination is ensured!

Now the flowerpecker is on the verge of total extinction; no one has been able to fully take over its biological functions in the ecosystems, and this has already provoked the degradation of the wild nature at all levels. Harvests of fruit trees are falling, there is no food base, competition for scarce resources begins. Many species suffer, die out, and the populations of plants, birds, animals and insects decline.

This is a vivid example of how the disappearance of one species can trigger a chain reaction of subsequent extinctions! Thus one small bird that disappeared due to human fault leads to uncontrolled ecosystem degradation.

This phenomenon is called the “domino effect”. Now imagine what complete extinction of more than 500 species in just a century means for the planet. It first of all means that every year about five bird species will be wiped off the face of the Earth, and consequently wild nature will degrade more and more, with extinctions of all other species occurring along the biological chain.

Scientists now say that the only way to somehow influence the problem is urgently to place up to half the habitat range of rare species under protection. This is exactly what we are advocating in our Concept of Territories of Full Ecological Tranquility (TFET) — nature needs refuges from humans.

Scientists also say that it is already too late to save all species. And the situation is worsening! The most objective solution now is to focus efforts on saving the umbrella species, the most unique ones on which the greatest number of other plant and animal species depend.

In the study, the scientists propose a model for preventing the extinction of the planet’s most “functionally unique” birds. Specialists calculated that if it were possible to save at least 100 bird species (i.e., one in five of those doomed to disappear soon), this would preserve more than 68 % of the total projected functional diversity.

True, such conservation programmes seem completely unfeasible. Since 1993, with all the efforts of the world community, only about 21–32 bird species have been saved from extinction. And now the global environmental community is depressed, the problems of destruction of the wild concern few, yet the scale of ecocide is rapidly increasing. And in all this chaos, it is somehow necessary to manage to save from extinction at least 100 of the 500 birds that will soon be erased from the Earth.

Such is the scientific work — yet another set of data from scientists confirming the need for urgent protection of wildlife worldwide! Imagine that you are holding in your hands a great encyclopaedia detailing more than 500 different astonishing bird species on Earth…

And now imagine that every year five of those birds disappear forever. Along with them vanishes multi-million-year evolutionary history — the genetic heritage of the Earth.

© PAVEL PASHKOV