Overview
- The global review, published July 23, 2026 in Nature Reviews Biodiversity, synthesizes decades of monitoring and finds declines across every major flyway and nearly 300 migratory species already listed as globally threatened.
- Researchers identify multiple, interacting drivers of loss—habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, collisions with buildings and infrastructure, disease, and pesticide use—that act at breeding sites, stopovers, and nonbreeding grounds.
- The paper highlights new tools—miniaturized tracking, large-scale community science like eBird, AI acoustic monitoring, and population models—that reveal migration routes and where conservation actions will have the most impact.
- Authors point to programs such as Road to Recovery as models for forming international species working groups that target threats across full annual cycles and intervene before populations fall to endangered levels.
- The authors note past recoveries of waterfowl, cranes and raptors as proof conservation can work and call for scaled funding, stronger governance across borders, and social-science approaches to make coordinated action effective for people and places that depend on migratory birds.