A survey has found that just a few hundred of the larks survive in Ethiopia. Unless action is taken to save it, the bird will disappear.
While it may be the first recorded bird extinction on the continent, it will not be the last, warn conservationists.
The birds inhabit a very small pocket of grassland within the Liben Plain of southern Ethiopia.
"This imminent extinction reflects a wider social and political crisis that is repeated throughout Africa," said zoologist Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge.
This area of highland savannah used to be maintained by fire and by the grazing of large herbivores, such as elephants, antelopes and gazelles.
Borana pastoralists also traditionally walked their cattle across the plain as they migrated between different wet and dry season grasslands.
For millennia, both the wild animals and pastoralists kept the grasslands in good condition.
This habitat is now being destroyed.
Wild animals are too few to stop shrubs regrowing, while intensively reared livestock and agriculture are increasingly damaging the grasslands."
ORIGINAL SOURCE: BBC NEWS
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