Rare Bird Photo Contest Fights Extinction

WILDGuides, a British publishing company, had a problem. They wanted to put together a book about The World’s Rarest Birds, but were finding that it was pretty difficult locating photographs of the 590 bird species considered Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered or Endangered. The solution? Hold not one, but two international photo contests, one in 2010 and one in 2012. The winners of the 2012 The World’s Rarest Birds International Photo Competition were announced April 3rd. The winner in the Critically Endangered category is Dubi Shapiro, who took this photograph of a displaying White-bellied Cinclodes, a species found only in a small area in the Peruvian Andes. BirdLife International estimates its current population at 70-400 individuals.

The World’s Rarest Birds aims to promote awareness of the fragility of existence of these birds and to support BirdLife International’s Preventing Extinction Programme. You can see a slide show of the winning photographs of these endangered birds on the Princeton University Press Blog. 10000 Birds will be reviewing the book, available from Princeton University Press in the United States, in the near future.

photograph used courtesy of Princeton University Press