Sometimes the birds that shine the brightest flame out the quickest. A new study published recently in Conservation Biology has revealed that colorful birds are more likely to be listed as endangered than drabber species. This finding is truer in some parts of the world than others—colorful birds in Southeast Asia and South Asia, in particular, suffer from this bias. In some regions, the factor impacting colorful birds may be the pet trade, as these individuals are more popular, but it doesn’t explain the whole problem. “In Southeast Asia, the pet trade is a huge problem for songbirds, but in Latin America and Africa it’s probably habitat loss and climate change that are more important,” said study author Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela, assistant professor in environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in a press release. This finding may also be due to an inherent bias in conservation attention—one previous study has found that ugly birds receive less conservation and research attention.
