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Research

Understanding the drivers and species ecological traits underpinning the global trade in wild birds

Application summary

Human beings live in close neighborhoods with other species and have a history of using and translocating other species for human use and benefits in multiple ways. Yet, despite other species uses for us, human actions in the Anthropocene have led to big declines in numbers of wildlife. Nowadays one of the most pressing issues in conservation science is to understand the drivers of unsustainable use of the Earth´s resources, including wildlife. As bird species are one of the groups most traded by humans both internationally and locally on illegal and legal markets, this PhD project aims at combining multiple data sources at different spatio-temporal scales to understand these drivers of threat to bird species. This is done based on both global existing datasets (CITES trade database, IUCN RedList, Birdbase database & bird distributions) as well as new local empirical datasets collected at markets in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia. The aims include understanding the ecological factors and traits that make wild birds vulnerable to trade as well as identifying regions for this threat both for birds known to be traded as well as those not currently listed for trade. The new information produced will be extremely timely and relevant for targeting conservation actions to the species and regions where trade represents a most pressing current or future threat. They can inform the relevant institutions, such as CITES.

in the Anthropocene people live in close neighbourhoods with other species and have a history of admiring and using other species for people’s benefit in multiple ways. People’s value driven actions towards wildlife can be both supporting and degrading of biodiversity, and at worst have led to big declines in wildlife. Birds have both cultural and societal value and ecological significance. In this project, I studied human-bird interactions at different scales using novel questionnaire data in combination with citizen science and official data sources. Overall, the PhD dissertation ‘Understanding human-bird interactions: aesthetic values, wildlife trade and bird-feeding practices' increased understanding on the interplay of aesthetic value of birds, people’s nature relations and conservation issues. The results from a global online questionnaire show that across all bird species there’s variation in visual aesthetic value to people. Specific traits such as birds’ colours or morphology predict their visual appeal to humans. Further, the project showed that aesthetic value serves as a positive predictor for bird species presence in trade. As the association varies for product types and geographic scales, the results highlight the context-dependency of how aesthetic values underpin wild bird trade. A second digital questionnaire’s results from Finland show the reasons for changes in bird-feeding differed in urban and rural areas. Overall, the main reasons for negative changes were local restrictions to the practice, and observations of rats. The main reason for positive changes was people wanting to see more bird species. These information on human-bird interactions can be used to further understand the potential positive and negative ecological impacts of human’s value driven actions towards wildlife. This is of high importance to guide conservation decision making and policies in wildlife trade and feeding practices, and to halt human induced biodiversity loss.

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