Then he’ll be gone, the turnstone. Probably forever. The pretty beach bird no longer exists in Germany. The sucker falcon is also history: in the new Red List of breeding birds, both bird species are officially declared extinct in Germany. Ironically, at the end of the “Decade of Biological Diversity” proclaimed by the United Nations, the number of bird species in this country continues to shrink. And even below the threshold of complete extinction, the situation for many bird species has deteriorated significantly in recent years, as the Red List drawn up by a scientific committee made up of ornithological associations and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation shows. The overview, updated every six years, is to be published this week and is available to the SZ.
Since systematic records began more than 200 years ago, 14 bird species are now considered to be extinct in Germany, and the list could soon get even longer. According to the analysis of the Red List authors, six other bird species could already have disappeared: If another miracle does not happen within the next two years, the red-headed shrike, the great tern, the horned grebe, the sedge warbler, wood sandpiper and golden plover will also be declared extinct by 2024 at the latest because they have not brood in Germany for more than a decade. “In Germany, breeding bird species are threatened with extinction to a previously unknown extent,” warn the experts of the “National Committee of the Red List of Birds”.
Not only in the category “Extinct or missing”, the new list shows additions. In the highest endangerment category of still breeding species “Threatened with extinction” there are now 33 bird species – an increase of more than ten percent compared to the previous list. Among these bird species on the verge of extinction are now teal duck, gray shrike and barnacle warbler.
A total of 43 percent of all 259 bird species that regularly breed in Germany are now endangered. Another 21 are on the so-called pre-warning list, a kind of “candidate list” in which bird species that are still common are listed with an alarming downward trend. The herring gull is also there.
Researchers complain about the “trivialization” of the bird world
The researchers are also concerned about the ever-decreasing numbers of many bird species because it is accompanied by an increasing impoverishment of the bird world in large parts of Germany: A few very common bird species make up an ever larger proportion of the 75 to 100 million bird breeding pairs, according to the authors’ findings based on the evaluation of long-term monitoring data. By far the most common bird species are blackbirds and chaffinches, each with more than eight million breeding pairs. Together with eight other species, they make up more than 60 percent of all birds in Germany. Scientists see this “trivialization” of bird communities as a reflection of the increasing monotony of the landscape. Undemanding and adaptable generalists among bird species cope much better with deterioration in their habitat than specialists who, for example, are dependent on a very specific food or on diverse natural habitats.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that many of the bird species that prefer to live in agricultural land are on the red list. 70 percent of the 23 so-called open land species are now endangered. And for most of them, the situation has worsened compared to the 2015 Red List. Species that rely on insects are threatened above average. So, among others, Ortolan, cuckoo or Feldschwirl are promoted to a higher threat category in the new Red List. In the highest threat levels “critically endangered” or “critically endangered” they now share the space with other insectivores of the agricultural country such as partridge, Whinchat and meadow pipit.
The findings of the Red List support other analyzes such as the agricultural report of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation or a statement by the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Both had warned of an eco-collapse in the agricultural country and called for an ecological turnaround in European agricultural policy.
But there is also positive news in the new Red List. The snow-white great egret has migrated to Germany from southern and southeastern Europe in recent years and has now been detected as a breeding bird in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the first time. There is also an upward trend with the white stork, which, especially in West Germany, has benefited from decades of conservation efforts and, like the barn swallow and the little owl, is no longer considered to be directly endangered. Red kite, common redstart and house sparrow were even “released” from the red list, and with the triel, a bird species that was previously classified as extinct is making a comeback. The long-legged and mostly nocturnal field and steppe bird has been breeding again in Baden-Württemberg for several years, even if only in a few pairs.
And even the turnstone, now extinct as a breeding bird, can still be observed in the North Sea and Baltic Sea when it searches for snails and worms on the beach or on groynes surrounded by the sea. However, these are no longer breeding birds from Germany, but migrants from arctic regions where the turnstone is still not endangered.