Date: 7/8/25 10:15 am From: Ross Silcock via groups.io <silcock...> Subject: [NEBirds] New World Bird List
FYI-
Finally a unified world list with all the major players cooperating!
NEW WORLD LIST: 11,131 SPECIES
The major world checklists for birds of the world - the IOC, Clements/eBird, and Birdlife International/Handbook of Birds of the Word – have merged into a single unified list announced last month. This means that, for the first time, there is one global checklist of all bird species found on planet Earth.
It is called AviList, and it contains 11,131 species, 19,879 subspecies, 2,376 genera, 252 families, and 46 orders.
Until now, ornithologists, conservationists, and birders have used a selection of global checklists, each with its own rationale over what constitutes a bird species. AviList, intended to harmonize the global checklists, has been developed by the Working Group on Avian Checklists, with representatives from BirdLife International, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Ornithological Society, the International Ornithologists’ Union, and Avibase.
The AviList team worked for four years to make this all possible. Of course, there will be a time of adjustment. For example, BirdLife International will gradually adopt the unified bird list, along with some systematic background checks that will need to be run concerning the conservation status of various species.
Once fully aligned, the benefits for sustainable taxonomic work, global consensus, and clarity over conservation priorities are immense.
The AviList checklist is free for anyone to use and provides available open access in several formats.
Read more on this significant development here, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
