Collaborative Assessment of Extinction Risk of the Largest Avifauna in the World

Assessment of extinction risk is fundamental for conservation planning and practice. IUCN developed a system that can be objectively applied to most taxa. This is largely based on population and distribution sizes, and trends of change in them. These estimates are often opinions with no explicit link to empirical data or ecological knowledge. We assessed extinction risk of the bird species in Colombia in a highly collaborative process that allowed us to compile historical, recent and unpublished data. We invited ornithologists and highly qualified birdwatchers to provide information ranging from records to species accounts. Several institutions and researches provided information on: distributions, generation time, detailed climatic data, deforestation and other measures of habitat change across the country. We modeled species distributions using Maxent or produced expert models for little known species. We obtained estimates of population sizes using measurements of habitat and known population densities, and rates of deforestation as proxy for rates of change in population size. Though these methods involve high levels of uncertainty they are based on evidence. T his approach could be used elsewhere to enhance accuracy of estimates in countries with high biodiversity and low information levels.