Current Protected Areas Cannot Protect Parrots From Extinction
A recent study finds that parrots will rapidly go extinct if we allow deforestation, agriculture and poaching to continue unabated
Glossy black cockatoos, Calyltorhynchus lathami, fly in for a drink of water during the devastating Australian bush fires of 2020. The glossy black cockatoo is one of is one of Australia's rarest cockatoo species. The red tail panels reveal these are two males. (Credit: Bowerbirdaus / CC BY-SA 4.0 International)
. . . Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
— Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi © Crazy Crow Music
People love parrots for their intelligence, their ability to mimic the human voice, and for their beauty, but at the same time, we are rapidly persecuting them into extinction. According to BirdLife International, a world leader in bird conservation, 28% of the 398 known parrot species are currently listed as Threatened and another 24% are Near Threatened, with larger species three times more likely to be at risk of extinction than smaller ones.
“In a previous global evaluation of parrots [ref] with scientists from BirdLife International we showed that they are among the most threatened bird orders, with higher extinction risk than other comparable bird groups,” said a co-author of the study, George Olah, who specializes in the tropical ecology and conservation genetics of parrots at the Australian National University’s Fenner School of Environment and Society.
