Language barriers in global bird conservation
Negret, P.J., Atkinson, S.C., Woodworth, B.K., Corella, Tor M., Allan, J.R., Fuller, R.A. & Amano, T. (2022) PLOS ONE 17 (4): e0267151.
Multiple languages being spoken within a species’ distribution can impede communication among conservation stakeholders, the compilation of scientific information, and the development of effective conservation actions.
By combining global datasets of distributions of 10,863 bird species and 119 official languages in 252 countries/territoris in the world, we showed that a surprisingly large number of languages are spoken within the distribution of each bird species. For example, 1,587 bird species have 10 languages or more spoken within their distributions.
Importantly, we also showed threatened and migratory species have significantly more languages spoken within their distributions. Particularly high numbers of species with many languages within their distribution are found in Eastern Europe, Russia and central and western Asia.
Also explore our Bird Language Diversity app, where you can see where in the world particularly many species are associated with each language.
See the news release from The University of Queensland here.