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Highlights from the past 25 years:
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| 1980s–early 2000s |
The threat of global climate change gradually gains international acceptance. |
| 1984–1990 |
The Canon Company demonstrates the first digital electronic still camera in
1984. Digital imagery and the Internet make their appearance in 1990. |
| 1986–1990 |
Charles Sibley, Jon Ahlquist, and later Burt Monroe use dna-dna hybridization
to determine genetic similarities between species and restructure the avian
family tree. |
| 1987 |
Bird dna “fingerprinting” in studies d on the work of Terry Burke and Mi
chael W. Bruford, among others, contributes to our understanding of the socio
biology, demography, and ecology of wild birds. |
| 1988 |
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) establish the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) to evaluate human-induced climate change. |
| 1992 |
The Habitats Directive extends the protective measures in the Birds Directive
of 1979.[7]
The United Nations conference The Earth Summit is held in Rio de Janeiro.
William Rees, in Canada, coins the term “ecological footprint.” |
| 1997 |
The Kyoto Protocol limiting the emissions of carbon dioxide and five other
greenhouse gases is negotiated in Kyoto, Japan.
A study by C. P. Chamberlain, J. D. Blum, R. T. Holmes, Xiahong Feng, T. W. Sherry, and G. R. Graves, who sampled feathers from nine |
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sites within the
temperate breeding range of the Black-throated Blue Warbler (Dendroica caeru-lescens) in eastern North America, show Isotope signatures in feathers that
can identify the origin of migratory birds. This is because juvenile birds grow
all of their feathers in their natal territories, and prior to migration the blood
supply for the now-grown feathers is cut off, making them metabolically inert
and traceable back to their place of origin. |
1997-
2007 |
There is rising concern about bird viruses. H5N1 appears in 1997; the West
Nile virus reaches the United States, in 1999; the bird-human transmission of
h5n1 is established in 2003; and H5N1 continues to spread, reaching 44 countries by September 2007. |
| 2006 |
Computer scientists demonstrate a digital “light field” or “plenoptic” camera
with a microlens that is an array of almost 90,000 miniature lenses (like the
compound eye of an insect). It can produce photographs that are in focus at all
levels of depth. |
| 2007 |
Global warming models and evidence on especially strong effects in Arctic re
gions have convinced scientists and most of the public that global warming is
a serious prob- lem for natural environments and ecosystems. As the normally
ice-blocked Northwest Passage opens for the first time in recorded history, and
discussion is under way to add the Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) to the list of
threatened and endangered species, studies to record the effects of warming
on birds, es- pecially penguins and other seabirds, as well as long-distance mi
grants, rapidly expand. |
| 2008 |
Former Vice President Al Gore shares the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change (IPCC) for providing policy-makers and the public with evidence for the link between increases in greenhouse gases and global climate change. |
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