As G8 countries try to hatch a plan to tackle rising CO2 emissions (see “Climate wrangles”), a global analysis of the effects that human activities will have on land birds is ruffling conservationists’ feathers.
By 2050, up to 900 species of land birds could be threatened by climate change and habitat destruction through activities such as logging. By 2100, the number of bird species on the World Conservation Union’s Red List of threatened species may more than double.
Walter Jetz from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues mapped the distributions of all 8750 known land bird species…
