After years of dedicated conservation efforts, the fortunes of one of the world's rarest birds are taking off.
As Good Things Guy reported, the South African population of the white-winged flufftail has improved to such an extent that the species has been downgraded from "critically endangered" to "endangered."
The birds are only found in Ethiopia and South Africa, which are about 2,500 miles apart. They live in wetlands, and until recently, that was more or less all that the experts had to go on.
As a profile by BirdLife International noted, a classic book about the birds of South Africa said they were found "in marshes … and that is practically all that is known about them."
Thanks to camera traps and acoustic monitoring, some more details about the birds were unveiled. Like trail cameras, acoustic monitoring is an excellent method for surveying elusive wildlife in a non-invasive manner. As technology improves, it's becoming an increasingly popular and cost-effective option, per the World Wildlife Fund.
The knowledge gained from these surveys has been pivotal to the efforts of the groups working to protect the flufftail. Dr. Kyle Lloyd, project manager of Birdlife South Africa's Wetlands Conservation, said: "The white-winged flufftail is present in more locations than we once thought. … This downlisting is not a free pass; it's a signal to keep going."
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The main threat to the white-winged flufftail's long-term survival is habitat destruction caused by land clearance for agricultural and mining interests.
The bird can only survive in wetlands, and South Africa, like the rest of the continent, is losing these precious lands at an unsustainable rate. According to an article in Down to Earth, South African wetlands are "degrading faster than they can be restored."
Downlisting is an important milestone that demonstrates the vital role that local action plays in conservation efforts. Other threatened bird species have managed to come back from the brink, so there's plenty of cause for optimism if those efforts are sustained. Restoring an endangered species is often difficult, but it's always worth the effort.
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