Kerala to have its own Regional Red List of Birds.

June 27, 2022

Kerala will soon have its own red list of birds. The Kerala Bird Monitoring Collective led by Kerala Agricultural University and the Bird Count India will conduct the regional red list assessment.
Kerala will become the first State to have a region-specific red list of birds. Assessment will be done on the basis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines.
But there are limitations for the global assessment as it is a process prepared in a global context. A species seen common at the global level may be a threatened species at the regional level.
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.
According to the global IUCN red list, Kerala has 35 threatened species of birds. In that, Red¬headed vulture and White¬rumped vulture are critically endangered. Steppe Eagle, Banasura Chilappan and Nilgiri Chilappan are endangered and 11 species are vulnerable.
The Kerala Bird Atlas 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.