A team of researchers has flagged concerns that nearly 78 per cent of the world's bird species are unable to thrive in highly modified human-dominated environments, underscoring the urgent need for conservation efforts to protect avian biodiversity. This new research comes in the backdrop of the existing statistic that notes that 14 percent of the world's 11,000 bird species are already threatened with extinction.Conservation actions targeted towards preserving and restoring habitats for sensitive bird species are crucial to prevent further population declines and safeguard the ecological balance. The study is published in the international science journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, and it was a joint effort of researchers from the University of Helsinki (Finland), Aarhus University (Denmark), University of St Andrews (UK), and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies (Spain).

“Threatened species, and species with declining populations, are less tolerant to breeding in human-dominated habitats. For example, the Fern Wren, a species occurring only in tropical forests of northeastern Australia, is endangered, has a declining population and a very low tolerance to any human pressure,” said Emma-Liina Marjakangas, leader of the study affiliated at both University of Helsinki and Aarhus University.

However, not all species are as sensitive to living alongside humans. “Some species can tolerate even the most intense human pressures on all continents. Common Swifts are an example of such species that can be found breeding in urban areas all around the world,” explained Marjakangas.

Following the UN’s Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, goals have been set to protect 30 per cent of the Earth’s land for conservation, but not much of that percentage will be pristine habitat.

“This study enables us to identify species that are particularly sensitive to human activity and need more protected habitats to thrive, for example the Great Snipe in Europe, the Nkulengu Rail in Africa and the Hume's Lark in Asia. Conservation action to protect or restore habitat can then be targeted towards the species and locations that need it most, explains senior curator Aleksi Lehikoinen from the Finnish Museum of Natural History in Finland.

Europe and North America had higher proportions of human-tolerant bird species than Latin America and Africa did. Europe has a long history of environmental impacts spanning millennia, which, according to the researchers, may have resulted in historical disappearances of sensitive species and also in a long time frame for the remaining species to adapt to the gradually changing landscapes.