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India-wide Estimate Put Small Minivet Long-term Trend at −32%, While Recent Annual Trend Was Positive

Small Minivet perched on a branch in Sundarbans National Park, India
Conservation · Population & status

The 2025 interim update from State of India’s Birds estimated a long-term decline for the small minivet (Pericrocotus cinnamomeus) across India, while its more recent annual trend was positive. The updated assessment uses citizen-science data from the eBird platform and was released as a new dataset in May 2026.

The national long-term trend was estimated at −32.5% and clearly supported a long-term decline. By contrast, the current annual trend was +1.4% per year and clearly supported a recent increase. The two measures describe different time scales, so the updated results indicate that the longer-term decline and the more recent increase are both present in the national abundance index.

The update also estimated the species’ Indian distribution range at 1,639,116 km². State of India’s Birds describes the small minivet as a resident associated with forest and plantations and continues to show it in the Low conservation-priority category.

The 2025 update revised the numerical distribution and trend values for 942 previously assessed Indian bird species using approximately 48 million field observations uploaded to eBird through 31 May 2025. The trend values describe change in a reporting-based abundance index rather than direct counts of individual birds. The conservation categories themselves were not recalculated in this interim release.

Sources and image credit

  1. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2026). State of India’s Birds: Range, trends, and conservation status (Version 2) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20036633Primary 2026 dataset release created 6 May 2026. Version 2 updated the numerical distribution range size, long-term trend and current annual trend values for 942 previously evaluated species using approximately 48 million eBird observations through 31 May 2025; the assessment categories were unchanged.
  2. State of India’s Birds Partnership. (2025). State of India’s Birds factsheet: Small Minivet (Pericrocotus cinnamomeus).Species page displaying the 2025 national update: long-term trend −32.49% (interval −41.67 to −21.94), current annual trend +1.44% (0.32 to 2.55), distribution range size 1,639,116 km² (1,638,562–1,639,670), and Low conservation priority.

Image: Tisha Mukherjee / Wikimedia Commons — small minivet in Sundarbans National Park, West Bengal, India, 13 March 2026; cropped to 16:9. Representative image for this story; not presented as an animal or scene from the reported study or event. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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