Rare warbler found in Afghanistan

Scientists say they have for the first time discovered a breeding site for the world's least-known bird species.

Little is known about the large-billed reed warbler, but researchers have found a thriving flock of the birds in a remote corner of Afghanistan.

Robert Timmins from the US based Wildlife Conservation Society discovered them when he was conducting a survey in the area.

The tiny brown bird, first spotted in 1867, has not been seen since 2006.

Mr Timmins says one of the reasons why so little is known about these birds is that they are often mistaken for other types of warblers and they are a very private species.

"Reed warblers are very good at hiding and they don't like to be seen. They usually like to skulk in thick vegetation", he said.

Mr Timmins taped the rhythmic song of these reed warblers, and with colleagues used the recording to entice other members of the colony from their hiding places.

DNA analysis confirmed this was a distinct breeding population of the large-billed variety.

While the scientists are excited by the discovery, they are concerned about the long-term survival of these birds.

Ironically the ongoing war and the remoteness of their location have helped their survival - but according to Mr Timmins, this might change.

"We don't wish a war-like situation on anybody. But once peace comes and development starts, you really do have to think about what will happen to the natural environment," he said.

As well as a flood of new information about the large-billed reed warbler, this discovery will hearten researchers that species can survive in even the most difficult of environments - there may well be other birds out there that have been presumed extinct, but are in fact surviving in some remote corner.

World's biodiversity 'crisis' needs action, says UN

The UN has launched the International Year of Biodiversity, warning that the ongoing loss of species around the world is affecting human well-being.

Eight years ago, governments pledged to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, but the pledge will not be met.

The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is the main reason.

Speaking at the launch in Berlin, German premier Angela Merkel urged the establishment of a new panel to collate scientific findings on the issue.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), urged governments and their leaders to renew their commitment to curbing biodiversity loss even though the 2010 goal will be missed.

"The urgency of the situation demands that as a global community we not only reverse the rate of loss, but that we stop the loss altogether and begin restoring the ecological infrastructure that has been damaged and degraded over the previous century or so," he said.

The UN says that as natural systems such as forests and wetlands disappear, humanity loses the services they currently provide for free.

These include purification of air and water, protection from extreme weather events, and the provision of materials for shelter and fire.

With species extinctions running at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate, some biologists contend that we are in the middle of the Earth's sixth great extinction - the previous five stemming from natural events such as asteroid impacts.

Cash log

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was agreed at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, alongside the climate change convention.

But it acquired its key global pledge during the Johannesburg summit of 2002, when governments agreed to achieve a "significant reduction" in the rate of biological diversity loss by 2010.

Conservation organisations acknowledge that despite some regional successes, the target is not going to be met; some analyses suggest that nature loss is accelerating rather than decelerating.

"We are facing an extinction crisis," said Jane Smart, director of the biodiversity conservation group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

"The loss of this beautiful and complex natural diversity that underpins all life on the planet is a serious threat to humankind now and in the future."

Mrs Merkel backed the idea of forming a scientific panel to collate and assess research on biodiversity loss, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assesses evidence on climatic indicators.

"The question of preserving biological diversity is on the same scale as climate protection," she said.

"It would be sensible to have an interface between the politics and the science to integrate knowledge."

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

A large on-going UN-sponsored study into the economics of biodiversity suggests that deforestation alone costs the global economy $2-5 trillion each year.

The UN hopes some kind of legally-binding treaty to curb biodiversity loss can be agreed at the CBD summit, held in Japan in October.

One element is due to be a long-awaited protocol under which the genetic resources of financially-poor but biodiversity-rich nations can be exploited in a way that brings benefits to all.

However, given the lack of appetite for legally-binding environmental agreements that key countries displayed at last month's climate summit in Copenhagen, it is unclear just what kind of deal might materialise on biodiversity.

Political football

The UN has been pursuing new ways of raising public awareness on the issue, including a collaboration with the Cameroon football team taking part in the African Nations Cup finals.

Many environment organisations will be running special programmes and mounting events during the year.

"The big opportunity during the International Year of Biodiversity is for governments to do for biodiversity what they failed to do for climate change in Copenhagen," said Simon Stuart, a senior science advisor to Conservation International and chair of IUCN's Species Survival Commission.

"They have the chance to make a major difference; and key to this will be halting species extinctions, the most irreversible aspect of biodiversity loss."

WWF is highlighting 10 species it considers especially threatened, ranging from commercially significant ones such as bluefin tuna to the Pacific walrus and the monarch butterfly.

In the UK, the national IYB partnership - hosted from the Natural History Museum (NHM) - is asking every citizen to "do one thing for biodiversity" in 2010.

Grey squirrels 'do not harm woodland birds in England'

Grey squirrels do not have a significant impact on the populations of many of England's woodland bird species, a study has found.

Researchers from the British Trust for Ornithology and Natural England examined the impact of grey squirrels on 38 bird species across the country.

They found some evidence that grey squirrels may locally suppress the populations of some species.

But they do not appear to cause the birds any widespread or lasting harm.

The findings of the study, which contradict the view that grey squirrels have caused declines in British bird numbers over the past 40 years, are published in the Journal of Ornithology.

It has long been known that grey squirrels, an invasive species to the UK, predate on bird eggs and will also kill and eat fledglings. Red squirrels, the UK's native squirrel species, do the same.

Over the past four decades, many wild bird species have declined in abundance in the UK.

Many of these declines have been associated with changes to agricultural practice.

But it has often been argued that predators, such as grey squirrels, are also killing off native birds.

This threat - combined with the damage that grey squirrels can do to native trees, and the impact that grey squirrels may be having on the remaining populations of red squirrels - had led to calls last year, backed by Prince Charles, to cull the invasive species.

Blackbirds thrive despite the grey squirrels' taste for their eggs

However, firm evidence that predation by grey squirrels has caused national declines in the numbers of native bird species has been lacking.

So researchers at the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and Natural England (NE) reviewed a wealth of data on bird and grey squirrel numbers in England to search for evidence that greys were having an impact.

BTO ecologists Dr Stuart Newson, Dr David Leech and Dr Chris Hewson and NE's Dr Humphrey Crick and Mr Phil Grice examined 38 bird species associated with woodland, including common starlings, wood pigeons, wrens, woodpeckers, thrushes, warblers, tits and finches.

Data on their population sizes and that of grey squirrels was gathered by the Breeding Bird Survey.

Around 160,000 red squirrels remain in the UK, compared to 2.5 million grey squirrels Over 2 million of these grey squirrels live in England In the past, grey squirrels have been blamed for significant declines in now rare birds such as lesser spotted woodpeckers, common nightingales, tree pipits, willow warblers, song thrushes, willow and marsh tits and hawfinches

They found very little evidence that grey squirrels were suppressing bird numbers.

"Grey squirrels are very unlikely to have driven observed declines in woodland birds in recent years," Dr Newson told the BBC.

Of the 38 bird species, a statistically significant relationship between grey squirrel and bird population sizes was found for 12 species.

Of those, squirrels appeared to have a positive impact on seven bird species, a correlation probably caused by both mammal and bird species benefiting from similar changes to their habitat.

Grey squirrels had a negative impact on just five: the common blackbird, Eurasian collared dove, green woodpecker, long-tailed tit and Eurasian jay.

"Of these species, the most convincing evidence is for blackbird and collared dove," says Dr Newson.

For these two species, the researchers found a weak but significant relationship between the abundance of grey squirrels and a failure of the birds' nests.

However, while grey squirrels may be predating on these two species, the overall number of blackbirds and collared doves has gone up nationally, and even locally where grey squirrels are common.