The last known photo of the slender-billed curlew, a grayish-brown migratory waterbird, was taken in February 1995 at Merja Zerga, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast. There will likely never be another one. The species, Numenius tenuirostris, has officially been declared extinct by the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority. “The extinction of the Slender-billed Curlew is a tragic and sobering moment for migratory bird conservation,” Amy Fraenkel, executive secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), said in a statement. “It underscores the urgency of implementing effective conservation measures to ensure the survival of migratory species.” A slender-billed curlew illustration by Elizabeth Gould & Edward Lear via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). Details of the exact breeding and wintering sites of the slender-billed curlew have been hazy at best, although it’s known to have bred in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, and migrated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In June 1995, the slender-billed curlew was included among 255 priority species of waterbirds listed in the then-new Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA), according to the CMS press release. The latest IUCN assessment of the species notes that historically the slender-billed curlew was likely locally common, but there were signs of decline as early 1912. By the 1940s, researchers were warning the bird might already be close to extinct. In a study published November 2024, researchers concluded the bird most likely went extinct sometime in the mid-1990s, after that last verified…This article was originally published on Mongabay
