The search for birds lost to science, how researchers are harnessing crowdsource data to identify birds that haven't been spotted in over a decade.

When there's more citizen scientists who are out there documenting species,

they're less likely to be lost.

It's Tuesday, June 25th, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm Cyfri producer Shishana Bucksbaum.

Some birds are synonymous with extinction, like the dodo or the passenger pigeon, but how do we prevent species from reaching that point?

One of the first things to do is identify birds that are lost to science.

These are birds that haven't been documented in over a decade, but just might still be out there,

if we look for them. Here's Sci-Fi producer Kathleen Davis with more.

A new study tallies up birds that have been lost to science using data from

citizen scientists all over the world. In total, the project called the

search for lost birds identified 126 Project called the Search for Lost Birds,

identified 126 such bird species.

So joining me now to talk more about this

is my guest, Dr. John Mittermeyer,

director of the Search for Lost Birds

at the American Bird Conservancy.

He's joining us now from Kampala, Uganda.

John, welcome to Science Friday.

Thanks, Kathleen.

It's great to be here. So walk me through what it means for a bird to be quote unquote lost to science.

So for us lost means that there's no independently verifiable documentation of the species in the last 10 or more years.

So that's photos, audio recordings, genetic material, you know, any of that in the last 10 years,

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