The Crisis For Birds Is A Crisis For Us All | The mass disappearance of North American birds is a dire warning about the planet’s well-being. | The loss of nearly 3 billion birds signals a looming crisis that we have the power to stop. | There are 3 billion fewer birds winging across the U.S. and Canada than there were 50 years ago -- a 29 percent decline overall. "This is the loss of nature."

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There are 3 billion fewer birds winging across the U.S. and Canada than there were 50 years ago -- a 29 percent decline overall. "This is the loss of nature."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html
https://science.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaw1313

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/opinion/crisis-birds-north-america.html

The Crisis For Birds Is A Crisis For Us All

The mass disappearance of North American birds is a dire warning about the planet’s well-being.

By John W. Fitzpatrick and Peter P. Marra

Dr. Fitzpatrick is the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Marra is the director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative.

Sept. 19, 2019

Nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.

The disappearance of 2.9 billion birds over the past nearly 50 years was reported today in the journal Science, a result of a comprehensive study by a team of scientists from seven research institutions in the United States and Canada.

https://www.3billionbirds.org/

As ornithologists and the directors of two major research institutes that directed this study, even we were shocked by the results. We knew of well-documented losses among shorebirds and songbirds. But the magnitude of losses among 300 bird species was much larger than we had expected and alarmingly widespread across the continent.

What makes this study particularly compelling is the trustworthiness of the data. Birds are the best-studied group of wildlife; their populations have been carefully monitored over decades by scientists and citizen scientists alike. And in recent years, scientists have been able to track the volume of nighttime bird migrations through a network of 143 high-resolution weather radars. This study pulls all of that data together, and the results signal an unfolding crisis. More than half our grassland birds have disappeared, 717 million in all. Forests have lost more than one billion birds.

Much of the loss is among common species. The red-winged blackbird population has declined by 92 million. A quarter of all blue jays have disappeared, along with almost half of all Baltimore orioles. These are the birds we know and love, part of the bird life that makes North America lively, colorful and filled with song every spring. While it remains vital to save the most endangered of these birds, the loss of abundance among our most common species represents a different and frankly more ominous crisis.

Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble. Unfortunately, this study is just the latest in a long line of such mounting evidence.

A study in Germany, for instance, reported a midsummer decline of 82 percent in the biomass of flying insects over the past quarter century. Forty percent of the world’s amphibians are in danger of extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Stocks of bluefin tuna are down to the last 3 percent of their historic population, and the United States’ Atlantic cod fishery recently hit a low. A United Nations report this year warned that about a million animal and plant species face extinction. That’s “more than ever before in human history,” according to the report.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809
https://www.iucnredlist.org/
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/05/21/pacific-bluefin-tuna-stock-remains-highly-depleted-new-science-shows
https://www.seafoodwatch.org/-/m/sfw/pdf/reports/h/mba_seafoodwatch_uscodhaddockpollockreport.pdf
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

All these statistics together underscore the pervasive character of the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch defined by the planet’s natural systems being altered profoundly by human behavior. How deeply will these losses have to cut before society declares, “Enough!”?

We can do better, and we must, if only in our own self-interest, because trouble for birds means trouble for us as well.

Staggering Losses of the Most Abundant Birds

A selection of common species.

The fate of meadowlarks offers an example. These yellow-breasted songsters of America’s wide open landscapes depend on healthy grasslands that play an important role in filtering water runoff. But in the last half-century, 73 million eastern meadowlarks and 65 million western meadowlarks have vanished as grasslands have been lost and water in many communities has become contaminated by agricultural runoff.

https://www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/loss-of-great-plains-grasslands-puts-critical-ecosystems-at-risk

Fortunately, it’s not all bad news. Populations of North American ducks and geese have grown by 56 percent since 1970, according to the Science paper, and this is not an accident. During the first half of the 20th century, hunters became deeply concerned about declines in duck populations every bit as severe as those we’re witnessing among common songbirds today. The United States and Canada responded with laws to protect wetlands and collaborated with Mexico to safeguard migrating waterfowl. Conservation management became increasingly driven by science. Private philanthropy, especially by Ducks Unlimited, generated significant financial support for wetlands acquisitions. Millions of additional acres of wetlands were restored and protected by the federal and state governments. The result: Waterfowl populations are booming today.

Across the Continent, Birds in Collapse

Percentage change in bird populations since 1970, by United States and Canadian breeding habitats.

That success in waterfowl management can point the way forward. We need bold, landscape-scale conservation campaigns across North America that are comparable with those that brought back the ducks. These efforts do not require locking up land in gated wildlife preserves. Conservation programs under the federal Farm Bill on private lands in the Upper Midwest helped grow duck populations while providing protection from floodwaters and keeping drinking water supplies safe. Expanding the scope of those Farm Bill conservation programs would produce more of these benefits. Moreover, a bipartisan measure in the House called the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would direct some $1.4 billion a year in federal dollars to invigorate underfunded state and tribal wildlife habitat conservation programs.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3742/cosponsors?q=%7B%22party%22%3A%5B%22Republican%22%5D%7D

Habitat loss has been the main cause of bird declines, and efforts to reduce development in wild lands and suburban sprawl should remain at the forefront of conservation priorities. Additionally, we need to address other threats killing birds. Feral and pet cats roaming outdoors cause huge bird mortality every year, as do collisions with buildings, communications towers and power lines. Recent evidence shows that pesticides, like neonicotinoids, may be directly or indirectly responsible for killing large numbers of birds. What’s also worrisome is that scientists are only now beginning to assess the ravages of the changing climate on bird populations.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-112414-054133
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6458/1177

More People, Fewer Birds

Another way to assess the decline: a rough estimate of how many birds there were for every person in Canada and the United States in 1970 and in 2018.

What we need most is a societal shift in the values we place on living side-by-side with healthy and functioning natural systems. Natural habitat must not be viewed as an expendable luxury but as a crucial system that fosters human health and supports all life on the planet. The loss of nearly three billion birds signals a looming crisis that we have the power to stop. We call on all our lawmakers, political candidates and voters across the continent to place renewed value on protecting our common home — the great tapestry of natural systems we share with other species and must protect for future generations.


John W. Fitzpatrick is the director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Peter P. Marra is the director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative and previously ran the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

https://ecologyandevolution.cornell.edu/john-weaver-fitzpatrick
https://www.georgetown.edu/news/leading-smithsonian-scientist-to-direct-georgetown-environment-initiative

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