New Report Highlights Dire Situation of Many U.S. Birds
For the second time in as many days, a new report highlights trouble for American birds. While a study by the National Audubon Society points out threats from future climate change, a new multi-agency report says that many U.S. birds are already in decline. (See "Climate Change May Put Half of North American Birds at Risk of Extinction.")
The current state of birds in the U.S. is a mixed bag, according to a report released Tuesday morning by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative U.S. Committee. Some species, like the bald eagle, have recovered enough to be taken off the U.S. list of endangered species. Others, like all 33 native Hawaiian bird species, are either endangered or are likely to become endangered.
Human activities can have enormous impact on bird species—even the abundant ones, said Pete Marra, head of the Smithsonian's Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C., at a press conference.
Birds in the U.S. are hit with myriad threats, including invasive species introductions, new diseases, habitat loss, and climate change. Conservation efforts and habitat restoration can still save birds, Marra said, but must be implemented quickly.
The passenger pigeon is perhaps the most famous example of a common species driven out of existence with breathtaking speed, and the report marks the hundredth anniversary of their extinction. Flocks of billions of the birds darkened skies in the mid-1800s. Hunters slaughtered them until the last passenger pigeon was spotted in the wild in 1900. The species clung to life in captivity until 1914 when Martha, the last of her kind, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. (See "Century After Extinction, Passenger Pigeons Remain Iconic—And Scientists Hope to Bring Them Back.")
The current report is the fifth annual "State of the Birds," and is the latest to take a comprehensive look at the status of birds in the U.S., explained Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an interview. Researchers used long-term bird population data from 1968—or 1974, in the case of shorebirds—to 2012 to make their assessments. That included data sets like Audubon's annual Christmas Bird Count and the U.S. Geological Survey's Breeding Bird Survey.