Road surveys reveal widespread declines in South African birds of prey
Dr Megan Murgatroyd
A long-term study has revealed that road counts might be more reliable than atlas data in measuring whether a species population is growing or shrinking, particularly when looking at many species across a large region.
The study of 18 birds of prey and 8 large terrestrial bird species, involving repeated road counts over a distance of 391,789 km across central South Africa from 2009 to 2025, found substantial population declines in 13 of these 26 species, with clear increases shown for just 3 of them.
These results were the converse of those from the checklist-based data of the Southern African Bird Atlas Project (SABAP2), which found population increase trends in half of the same species and declines in only three. This suggests that, while tools such as these are useful for tracking species distributions, they may not be suitable for tracking abundance trends across large areas and multiple species simultaneously.
“Citizen science atlas projects like SABAP2 are absolutely vital for bird conservation in Africa,” said Fitz Associate Professor Arjun Amar, senior author of the study. “Our findings underline the importance of combining multiple monitoring approaches, particularly for wide-ranging species such as raptors, to ensure we have the most accurate picture possible of how populations are changing.”