Scientists Say ‘Lost Birds List’ Will Help Protect Rare Species

The first comprehensive list of birds that haven’t been seen or heard in more than a decade, as reported by citizen scientists, has been released by scientists.

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The Louisiade pitta (Erythropitta meeki) is one of the “lost” species found in 2022 and 2023 on Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. There had been no definite record of this bird since 1898. (Credit: Wang Bin | Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library)

The first comprehensive list of birds that haven’t been seen or heard in more than a decade has been released by a group of scientists, drawing on a wealth of citizen scientist sightings, photographs, video, and audio recordings reported to the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The Macaulay Library is the world’s largest archive of animal media. It includes more than 33 million photographs, 1.2 million audio recordings, and over two hundred thousand videos covering 96% of the world’s bird species. It also hosts rapidly growing numbers of insect, fish, frog, and mammal recordings.

“We started with the Macaulay Library because it is the richest depository of bird media, and we quickly found documentation for the vast majority of the world’s birds,” said the study’s lead author, Cameron Rutt, a bird biologist with the American Bird Conservancy at the time of the research, an Adjunct Professor at Louisiana State University and self-described “top-notch bird-bum” (read: freelance field biologist).