adj. 25B6; adjective
food was scarce : IN SHORT SUPPLY, scant, scanty, meagre, sparse, hard to find, hard to come by, insufficient, deficient, inadequate; at a premium, like gold dust; paltry, negligible; informal not to be had for love nor money; formal exiguous.
birds that prefer dense forest are becoming scarcer : RARE, few and far between, thin on the ground; uncommon, unusual; Brit. out of the common.
plentiful.