Warren Cornwall in Science:
NEAR MANAUS, BRAZIL—The lilting song of the musician wren once commonly heralded sunrise in the central Amazon jungle. But in October 2025 it was a rare wonder when the flutelike melody cut through the dawn gloom. “Did you hear that?” whispered Stefano Avilla, an ornithologist and Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM) Ph.D. student. “Good ear,” said Jared Wolfe, a Michigan Technological University wildlife ecologist. “This bird is in rapid decline. You don’t hear it very often.” Here in the Brazilian Amazon and in other tropical forests across the Americas, birds are vanishing from surprising places—expanses of forest untouched by fires, chainsaws, or bulldozers. These aren’t migratory species in decline because of habitat loss on distant continents; many spend their entire lives in a single patch of trees.
These enigmatic declines have received little publicity. But they are setting off alarm bells among scientists who monitor birds in places as far flung as Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Brazil. “It’s a big story,” says Bette Loiselle, a University of Florida (UF) ornithologist who has spent more than 2 decades studying birds in Ecuador’s Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, a part of the Amazon harboring some of the world’s richest biodiversity. In the seemingly healthy forest there, she’s watched sightings of once-familiar birds such as the wedge-billed woodcreeper, blue-crowned manakin, and white-throated toucan dwindle. “It’s someplace that you think, ‘This should not be happening.’”
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.