AsianScientist (Aug. 29, 2025) – There has been a significant decline in many of India’s bird species, a new study has revealed, highlighting the growing urgency for targeted and sustained conservation efforts.
The State of India’s Birds 2023 report, produced by a consortium of research institutions and conservation organisations, assessed the status of 942 bird species using data contributed by thousands of birdwatchers through the eBird citizen science platform. This report represents one of the largest biodiversity monitoring efforts in the Global South.
“Our findings reveal a sobering truth: India’s diverse bird populations are facing significant decline, underscoring an urgent need for concerted conservation efforts,” said Vivek Ramachandran, Fellow, Wildlife biology and conservation program at National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru. Ramachandran is one of the authors of the study.
The researchers found that 204 species have already experienced long-term declines, while another 142 are currently in decline. In terms of conservation urgency, 178 species were classified as High Conservation Priority, 323 as Moderate Priority, and 441 as Low Priority, highlighting the scale of the challenge in safeguarding the region’s wildlife.
Birds with specialised diets, such as those feeding on vertebrate prey, carrion, or invertebrates, were found to have declined the most, averaging over 25 percent long-term population loss. In contrast, species dependent on fruits or nectar have remained stable or even increased.
The study found that habitat specialists from grasslands, scrublands, and wetlands have experienced the steepest declines. Winter migrants to India have also declined more sharply than resident species, raising further alarm.
Using birdwatching data collected by citizen scientists, the researchers overcame common challenges such as uneven coverage across regions and differences in how much effort observers put in. The team developed a method to account for these gaps, ensuring that reliable scientific conclusions could still be drawn from volunteer-generated data.
“The analysis leveraged citizen science data from the eBird platform and developed a robust methodology to clean, organise, and analyse this semi-structured data to overcome biases. This framework allowed for the assessment of a larger number of bird species than previously possible and is intended to serve as a blueprint for regions with limited resources for traditional surveys,” said Ramachandran.
According to the researchers, one of the main challenges of using eBird data is the variable effort put in by citizen scientists. Instead of trying to make everyone’s birding sessions the same length or distance, the researchers compared checklists based on the number of species spotted. This made the data easier to compare across different observers.
A key strength of eBird is the completeness factor: birdwatchers can mark checklists as “complete”, indicating that all detected species were reported. The team used only these checklists to ensure data integrity.
This study offers a fresh approach to assessing biodiversity in regions where traditional surveys are limited, and shows how citizen science, when paired with rigorous methods and computational tools, can help address important knowledge gaps at scale.
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Source: National Centre for Biological Sciences, India. Image: Shutterstock
The study can be found at: State of India’s Birds 2023: A framework to leverage semi-structured citizen science for bird conservation
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