Human-driven extinction of bird species twice as high as thought, study says

A dodo skeleton. The new estimate for the total of bird species lost includes the likely number of unknown, as well as known extinctions. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

About 12% of the world’s bird species have been driven to extinction by human activity, new research has found – double previous estimates.

The study, published in Nature Communications on Tuesday, estimates that about 1,430 bird species have died out since the Late Pleistocene period, which started about 120,000 years ago.