Conserving the evolutionary history of birds.

In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, limited resources are forcing conservationists to prioritize which species and places will receive conservation action. Evolutionary distinctiveness measures the isolation of a species on its phylogenetic tree. Combining a species' evolutionary distinctiveness with its extinction risk creates a measure called an EDGE score. We use EDGE scores to prioritize the places and species that should be managed to conserve bird evolutionary history. We analyze all birds across species, orders, countries, and important bird areas. We further examine parrots, raptors, and seabirds in depth because these groups are especially threatened and relatively speciose. These three focal groups have greater median threatened evolutionary history than other birds, making them important for conserving bird evolutionary history. Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar, New Zealand, and the Philippines are especially critical countries because they have the most threatened evolutionary history for endemic birds and are important for parrots, raptors, or seabirds. We further highlight that increased enforcement of international agreements for the conservation of parrots, raptors, or seabirds is needed because these agreements protect hundreds of millions of years of threatened bird evolutionary history. Decisive action is required to conserve the evolutionary history of birds into the Anthropocene. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.