Endemic Bird Area (EBA)

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Endemic Bird Area (EBA)
An Endemic Bird Area (EBA) is an area of land identified by BirdLife International as being important for habitat-based bird conservation because it contains the habitats of restricted-range bird species (see below for definition), which are thereby endemic to them. An EBA is formed where the distributions of two or more such restricted-range species overlap. Using this guideline, 218 EBAs were identified when Birdlife International established their Biodiversity project in 1987. A secondary EBA comprises the range of only one restricted-range species.
EBAs contain about 93% of the world’s restricted-range bird species, as well as supporting support many more widespread species. Half the restricted-range species are threatened or near-threatened, with the other half especially vulnerable to the loss or degradation of their habitats because of the small size of their ranges. Most EBAs are also important for the conservation of other animals and of plants. Although they cover less than 5% of the world’s land surface, their biological richness makes them high priorities for ecosystem conservation. The natural habitat of most EBAs is forest, especially tropical lowland forest and highland cloud forest, often comprising islands or mountain ranges, and varying in size from a few square kilometres to over 100,000 km2. Some 77% of EBAs lie in the tropics and subtropics.
Restricted-range bird species

A restricted-range bird species is a term coined by BirdLife International in conjunction with the identification of Endemic Bird Areas. It is defined as a landbird (i.e. not a seabird) species which is estimated to have had a breeding range of not more than 50,000 km since 1800. It includes birds which have become extinct which qualify on the range criterion. It does not include birds which, although they meet the range criterion today, were historically (since 1800) more widespread.
NOTE: Patterns of Endemism are the product of historical events associated with speciation (e.g. time, place, and type of speciation event), as well as the responses of species to variable or changing ecological conditions (e.g. climatic change, competition)".
An Endemic Bird Area encompasses the overlapping breeding ranges of restricted range bird species, such that the complete ranges of two or more restricted species are entirely included within the boundary of the EBA. This does not necessarily mean that the complete ranges of all of an EBA’s restricted-range species are entirely included within the boundary of that single EBA, as some species may be shared between EBA’s 
There are twelve Endemic Bird Areas (seven EBA and five secondary areas) occur in India, such as Andaman Islands, Assam plains, Central Indian forests (secondary area), Eastern Andhra Pradesh (secondary area), Nicobar Islands, Southern Deccan plateau (secondary area), Western Ghats, Western Himalaya, etc. 


Importance
70% of EBAs overlap with areas of endemic plants (Centres of Plant Diversity) and are also important for other endemic taxa, therefore EBAs tend to be priorities for broad-scale ecosystem conservation. The current threat level (the percentage of restricted-range species in each EBA which are threatened, and the categories of threat of these species).

Year of Creation
Birdlife's Biodiversity Project begun in 1987. A complete publication on Endemic Bird Areas was published in 1998 . The identification of EBAs was a one-off process and they are not being further updated.

Management
There is no specific management for EBAs. While many EBAs cover large areas, many sites within EBAs are already protected within nationally protected areas and also as internationally recognised areas (e.g. World Heritage sites). Moreover, one of the criteria for BirdLife International’s Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBA), is the presence of restricted-range species and hence data used to define EBAs has also been used to define IBA sites.

Legal and compliance
The identification criteria of EBAs do not specify any requirements for legal protection of the area. However, legal protection and/or requirements to comply with certain safeguard standards may be present at least in parts of these areas due to their often large size and potential overlap with legally protected areas and IBAs.

Social-cultural values 
Because of their relatively large scale, EBAs are seldom a focus for local community engagement. However, the IBAs within them frequently are.

NOTE: IBAs (Important Bird and Biodiversity Area) are a part of EBA and not vice-versa

References:
http://www.biodiversitya-z.org/content/endemic-bird-areas-eba
http://www.bnhsenvis.nic.in/Database/2015_17327.aspx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_Bird_Area

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