On September 19, 2019, Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published an article reporting that North America has lost three billion birds, approximately 30 percent, since the 1970s (find the article at this link). The study was led by Ken Rosenberg of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. This was a startling discovery; the loss occurred across many types of birds: blackbirds, shorebirds, wood warblers, Old World sparrows and others.
The researchers drew upon the annual North America Breeding Bird Survey, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, that our Wild River Chapter participates in, and the International Shorebird Survey. The authors listed as a chief cause, habitat loss.
In addition, the authors found that some common birds, such as swallows, starlings and House Sparrows (the latter two introduced) were among those suffering the decline. Since the survey covers five decades, an individual birder might not recognize the losses, but this study encompasses nearly my entire birding life, and I testify that meadowlarks, both eastern and western; common nighthawks; spring migrating shorebirds; and those magical “warbler waves” of brilliantly-plumed neotropical warblers were in my young adulthood much more common than they are now. This is a phenomenon that observant people can see.
The authors viewed their report as a “wake-up call.” Rosenberg observed that when the cause of a specie’s decline has been addressed, the birds rebound, and cited the Bald Eagle and Peregrine Falcon numbers increasing after the banning of DDT. Other birds that have come back from the brink are Trumpeter Swans, Sandhill Cranes, Eastern Bluebirds, California Condors, and Wood Ducks (wood ducks were rare around the turn of the last century due to over hunting.)
Clearly, a decline this large cannot be addressed merely by individual action. It involves science-based policy being implemented in government programs. It matters who heads up the Department of Agriculture (for the Conservation Reserve Program that provides habitat on what would be marginal farmland); the Department of the Interior, and the U. S. Forest Service.
The United States, Canada and Mexico have enacted policies that have benefitted bird populations in the past, and the results were positive. Because of this, Rosenberg’s message is not doom and gloom, if it is alarming. He called himself, “weirdly hopeful” that humanity will rise to defend its feathered relatives.
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