Birder's Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk

By Jeffrey V. Wells

Until now there has been no single, comprehensive resource on the status of North America's most threatened birds and what people can do to help protect them. Birder's Conservation Handbook is the only book of its kind, written specifically to help birders and researchers understand the threats while providing actions to protect birds and their habitats. Jeffrey Wells has distilled vast amounts of essential information into a single easy-to-use volume-required reading for anyone who loves birds and wants to ensure they are protected. At-a-glance species accounts cover in detail North America's one hundred most at-risk birds; each account is beautifully illustrated by today's top bird artists. The text includes status, distribution, ecology, threats, conservation actions and needs, and references. A distribution map accompanies each entry. Chapters discuss birds as indicators of environmental health, the state of North American bird populations, major conservation issues, and initiatives now underway to improve the health of North America's birds.



Birder's Conservation Handbook is an indispensable resource for birdwatchers, researchers, naturalists, and conservationists. Reading it will inspire you to become an active steward of our birds and the habitats we share.

• A comprehensive guide to North America's one hundred most at-risk birds and how to protect them


• Compact and easy to use, with beautiful illustrations and data organized for convenient, at-a-glance reference


• Detailed species accounts, including distribution maps


• Practical advice on conservation


• Information on leading conservation agencies and resources

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Apr 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781400831517

Jeffrey V. Wells

Jeffrey V. Wells is Science and Policy Director of the Boreal Songbird Initiative and a Cornell University Visiting Fellow. He is the author of Birder’s Conservation Handbook, Birds of Sapsucker Woods, and Important Bird Areas in New York State.

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Scope and Purpose

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In the fall of 2002, as National Bird Conservation Director for the National Audubon Society, I developed a website providing information about the 201 North American bird species of highest conservation concern that made up the Audubon WatchList. While gathering the data for that site, I found myself time and again wanting to reach to my bookshelf for the quick-and-easy book that pulled together the salient facts about a species’ status, distribution, and population changes. That book did not yet exist, I knew, from my years as a conservation professional. Creating the Audubon WatchList website highlighted to me the need for such a reference—a book not only to provide the facts about birds of conservation concern but to do so in such a way as to inspire people to action.

I know first hand that cries of alarm too often fall on deaf ears; despite best intentions, people can hear only so much bad news before they become desensitized to it or so overwhelmed that they feel inadequate to do anything to help. I wanted to provide a book that presents the facts but that also offers hope, encouragement, and inspiration for those who want to take action to protect our birds and our environment.

It may come as a surprise to hear that North America is in the midst of a renaissance in bird conservation. The number of initiatives focused on various aspects of bird conservation has blossomed at an unprecedented rate in the last decade to include coalitions focused on conservation of songbirds, shorebirds, and waterbirds, in addition to the more traditional waterfowl and upland game bird conservation groups. All of this activity, and the parallel birth of other types of conservation work across the hemisphere, is exciting and gives me hope that my son and future generations will indeed be able to see for themselves the beauty and ecological significance of what today are some of the most critically endangered species. This is news that I wanted to share, especially since among the good work are countless examples of projects and actions initiated by ordinary people—people who are protecting birds and their habitats based on passion, not profession. Unfortunately, most of these wonderful examples are scattered across a dizzying array of documents and websites and often are placed in the context of some large environmental initiative that doesn’t describe all of the species benefiting from the work.

I hope that by my highlighting these actions, you will be encouraged to get involved, perhaps with one of the projects described in this book or perhaps by starting a new project. Above all, remember that anyone can make a difference for bird conservation. It is my hope that among the readers of this book will be some of the great conservationists of the future, whose work will lower the number of species that need to be included in the next edition.

WHAT ARE NORTH AMERICA’S BIRDS OF HIGHEST CONSERVATION CONCERN?

Sadly, including every species of conservation concern in a handbook intended for a broad audience is not feasible—there are just too many North American birds that fit into that category. To keep the book and what I hope is a strong and urgent conservation message from becoming overwhelming, I limited the number of species to 100—a manageable, memorable number. I hope that doing so has resulted in a book that is easy to use by anyone interested in learning about the major issues causing bird population declines and what’s being done to reverse those trends.

Now, why these 100 species? For the last decade I have been engaged with colleagues in research to help develop lists of bird species that should be given highest priority for conservation. There are a number of different ways in which lists can be and have been developed. There’s the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List, the USFWS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) Birds of Conservation Concern list, the USFWS endangered and threatened species list, the Partners in Flight WatchList, the Audubon Watchlist, the American Bird Conservancy Greenlist, the North American Waterbird Conservation Plan list, and the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan list. Then there are countless state and provincial wildlife agency lists that all spotlight bird species of conservation concern. These are all important lists, each based on factors that are most relevant to the organization’s reason for developing the list—which is to say, each list reflects the conservation mission and priorities of the entity creating the list. As a result, collectively, more than 500 bird species occur on one or more of these lists!

Although the total number combined is high, my colleagues and I have found in our research that virtually all of the lists agree on the species that are of greatest conservation concern. Many are painfully obvious because their population sizes have reached critical lows—birds like California Condor, Whooping Crane, and Kirtland’s Warbler. Some are more obvious to the professional ornithologist but less so to the lay birder—species like Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Bicknell’s Thrush, and Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow, most biologists know, are important to include because they have limited ranges and small populations. There are about 80 species in these more obvious categories. Choosing the remaining 20 to include was more difficult.

While writing this book, I was lobbied by many groups and individuals to include species they considered a priority in their own work. There are several criteria I used to determine the remaining species to include. First, I did not include a species if it had only a small portion of its total global range within the U.S. and Canada and was secure in the remainder of its range, unless there was very clear evidence that the population in North America was distinct enough that it might eventually be elevated to species status. Second, I did not include species for which the information on population declines came from only a portion of the range, was unclear, or was contradictory. A final criterion I used was not to include species with a decline of less than 50% over the last 50 years unless they also had a relatively small population size, had a small total range, or were considered to have significant threats.

In the end, the final 20 are all species of high priority that appear on one or more existing lists and most are showing steep population declines. Weight was given such that these remaining species represented a range of ecosystems, conservation issues, geographic areas, and bird families. While I have limited the number of species included in this book to 100, I have included in Appendix I a table showing which species occur on which of the various major lists. I invite you to delve more deeply into the background of each of these lists and to read some of the academic papers published on the science of conservation priority-setting.

SPECIES ACCOUNTS

Each species account provides information about the species, including status and distribution, ecology, threats, and conservation action and needs. Each species is illustrated, and there is a map for each species showing its entire range (not ending arbitrarily at the Mexican border, as is typical of field guides). But the bulk of each account is composed of text relating directly to the species’ conservation.

Status and Distribution

Information on the limits of the species’ distribution, including breeding and wintering ranges, is provided to complement a map illustrating the same. Whenever possible, specific protected areas or other locations known or thought to be important to the species are mentioned, along with the number of individuals of the species at the site, based on the most recent surveys, if available. In many cases, where such information was lacking or very limited, locations mentioned are those where the species is known to have been recorded but the overall importance of the site to the species may be uncertain. In some other cases (especially for species on their wintering ranges in the Caribbean and South or Central America), locations mentioned are where the species should occur based on known distribution and habitat, and are described as such in the species account. This section concludes with a summary of the most recent available trend information and population estimates.

Ecology

This section provides a brief summary of habitat use, ecology, and life history information about the species. It is not meant to be exhaustive but to provide a basic overview that sometimes also helps explain why the species may be vulnerable.

Threats

I have described threats considered of greatest significance or potential significance and quantified the significance of threats whenever possible. For example, I provide estimates of the amount of specific habitat already lost and/or predicted to be lost over a particular time period for some species. Threats that are likely to affect only a small portion of the range or that have a comparatively small impact on a species total population are not discussed.

Conservation Action

This section provides a synthesis of some of the activities that I believe are particularly important or novel and that have benefited the species. Many of the conservation actions I describe are not focused specifically on the bird species that are benefiting from the activity but instead were originally developed to benefit other species, resources, or issues. In many cases, these benefits may be easily and inexpensively broadened and enhanced if the particular needs of priority species are considered early in the process. This allows projects to develop a wider base of public support because there are clearly articulated benefits to multiple resources. My account of conservation initiatives for each species is not meant to be exhaustive but to show important examples and unique models. I encourage readers to learn more by following up on the references and website links to projects mentioned.

Conservation Needs

This section provides a list of specific recommendations for conservation actions and activities that will help increase populations of the species, increase protections for the species, and increase knowledge about the species. These recommendations are synthesized from available resources but ultimately reflect my own interpretations and opinions.

References

To make the species accounts easy to read for those unfamiliar with standard scientific writing, I have departed slightly from tradition in how I present references to the source materials from which the facts are drawn. I place a numbered series in superscript at the end of each section that refers to the numbered citations within this section. Rather than list them alphabetically, the citations appear in the order that the facts are presented within each section. I recognize that scientists reading this will find this system awkward and less precise but I feel that it is worth the trade-off to make the material more easily read by the broadest audience.

RESEARCH, WRITING, REFERENCES, AND REVIEW

The research, writing, and editing of the book was largely completed over a period of 35 months, from April 2003 until March 2006. I tried hard to ensure that I included the most up-to-date information available in published sources, in reports, and on websites from credible organizations and government agencies. Species accounts were reviewed by a multitude of experts who often had access to recent but unpublished survey data.

When checking information on distribution, ecology, and life history, I always started with The Birds of North America (BNA), the most up-to-date resource for such data. Completed between 1992 and 2002, BNA is a monumental, 28-volume series that provides an immensity of facts about 720 North American breeding bird species. Each account was written by one or more experts in some aspect of the species’ biology. The BNA accounts are excellent, but many, depending on the author’s interest and expertise, lack conservation-related information. Species accounts also typically have little relevant information about important threats and conservation activities benefiting the species.

Other sources important to research for this book included BirdLife International’s Threatened Birds of the World, American Bird Conservancy Guide to the 500 Most Important Bird Areas in the United States, Terrestrial Ecoregions of North America, Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States, Áreas de Importancia Para La Conservación de las Aves en México, Wetland International’s Waterbird Population Estimates, Neotropical Birds: Ecology and Conservation, and Biogeographical Profiles of Shorebird Migration in Midcontinental North America. I also made frequent use of Audubon’s Important Bird Area (IBA) information from published Important Bird Area books (including those from California, New York, Panama, and Washington) as well as unpublished IBA manuscripts (Florida) and web-accessible IBA databases (most available via Audubon’s website at www.audubon.org).

Species accounts were reviewed by more than 50 experts from many institutions. A full list of reviewers appears in the acknowledgments. Without the expertise of my fellow professionals, the book simply would not be complete. I especially wish to thank the dozens of biologists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who devoted considerable time in reviewing the species accounts and gave freely of their expertise and their data in order to make the accounts as up-to-date as possible. They have done a great service to users of this book. In the end, of course, all errors or omissions are mine, and all views expressed herein are mine and do not reflect the position of any agency, institution, or other individual.

I hope that you find this book useful and the conservation examples inspiring and a source of hope for you and your family. Good birding to you!

Birds as Indicators

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Many people think of the concept of using birds as environmental indicators as a new idea. But the most ancient human cultures were the first to use birds and other wildlife to track changes in their world. Our ancestors had to be exceptionally observant of nature to survive. The signals that they read from birds gave them clues about changes in food availability and seasonality. A drop in numbers of grouse in one area might have indicated to them that hunting pressure had become too great or that the habitat had grown too thick. An intentionally set fire might be in order. A concentration of Ospreys and Bald Eagles on the river in June would be cause for celebration. It meant that the migratory fish had returned to spawn and, like the birds, human families would soon also be feasting. The early arrival of fall migrant ducks and geese would warn that cold weather was on its way and that winter preparations should begin.

All of us today use birds as indicators in our own lives in subtle ways that we might not even recognize. Millions of Americans eagerly await the spring return of robins, swallows, or waterfowl that tells us that warmer weather is on the way. In the Northwest Territories of Canada, the return of gulls in the spring is a sign of open water somewhere in the area. And after enduring almost constant darkness and 30-below (°F) temperatures, any sign of spring there is joyfully received. Backyard bird enthusiasts are quick to share with their bird-feeding friends the news that they have seen fewer or more of their favorite birds. And often they wonder if the lack of some particular bird is related to the new construction across the street, the weather, or something else. In recent years, more and more people in northern regions of the U.S. report seeing larger numbers of American Robins in the winter. Is it a sign of the impact of global warming? they often ask. For my father-in-law, it wasn’t summer until he was again awakened every morning by the harsh mewing of a Gray Cat-bird outside his window. Since the new house went in next door, he tells me that he doesn’t hear it anymore, and he’s pretty sure he knows why.

Today, in North America and elsewhere in the world, we don’t think of the signals that birds are sending as vital to our survival in the same way that they were to our ancestors. But the truth is, they may be. Birds continue to serve as indicators for many environmental problems that affect us and our families. In recent history, birds provided the first or most visible indication of wider environmental problems in case after case.

• Unsustainability of unregulated commercial hunting was first demonstrated by the decline and eventual extinction of Passenger Pigeon, Great Auk, and Eskimo Curlew and later by declines in Wild Turkeys, American Golden-Plovers, Atlantic Puffins, Herring Gulls, Common Terns, Snowy Egrets, Great Egrets, and many other species.

• Pesticide contamination (especially DDT) impacts were shown by declines in Ospreys, Peregrine Falcons, Brown Pelicans, and Bald Eagles and, more recently, die-offs of waterfowl, shorebirds, and waders from agricultural runoff.

• Declines in water quality were signaled by mercury contamination in loons and scaup and, in Europe, declines in dippers and wag-tails.

• Declines in air quality were signaled by acid rain effects on thrushes in Europe and potential impacts on Wood Thrushes in northeastern North America as well as from mercury contamination in Common Mergansers, Common Loons, Bald Eagles, and Bicknell’s Thrushes.

• Loss of special or unique habitats was shown by major declines in Marbled Murrelets, California Gnatcatchers, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, and many others. Some have conjectured that this is probably what caused the extinction of Bachman’s Warbler as it may have been a specialist in cane habitats of the southeastern U.S.

• The ecological impact of widespread predator poisoning and persecution was demonstrated in the mortality of California Condors, and declines in Ferruginous Hawk and Mountain Plover (reliant on prairie dog towns). In much of eastern North America the total extirpation of top mammalian predators has contributed to massive deer populations that browse forests so heavily that there is no understory habitat for songbirds.

• The impacts of poor and unsustainable forestry practices certainly were signaled by the near extinction of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and by declines of the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Spotted Owl, and others.

• An understanding of the many ways in which habitat fragmentation can impact wildlife was demonstrated in forest songbirds from studies in eastern North America. Much of this work was stimulated by the discovery that certain birds, often long-distance migrants, had disappeared from isolated woodlots in the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S.

• Declines in Piping Plovers, Least Terns, and other coastal beach and inland sand-bar nesters were a clear signal that beaches, dunes, and other coastal ecosystems were being heavily impacted by home development, pollution, and recreational overuse and that inland river systems were damaged as a result of the building of dams and flood-control projects.

• The impact on ecosystems from the loss of habitat from agriculture was demonstrated by the extinction of the Heath Hen, the near extinction of Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken and Whooping Crane, and, more recently, massive declines in grassland and shrub-land birds, including Henslow’s Sparrow, Lesser Prairie-Chicken, Greater Prairie-Chicken, Gunnison Sage-Grouse, Greater Sage-Grouse, and Northern Bobwhite, as well as declines in prairie nesting waterfowl like the Northern Pintail.

• Changes in marine ecosystems as a result of fishing practices that are unsustainable and/or that cause high mortality of incidentally captured wildlife species have been signaled by birds in locations around the world. Here in North America, examples include the decline in Red Knots from overharvest of horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, declines in Elegant Terns and Brown Pelicans in southern California attributable to overfishing of anchovy, and declines in various albatross species when they are incidentally hooked and drowned in the practice of long-line fisheries.

• The effects of oil spills and oil pollution have been demonstrated most vividly in alcids, penguins, and other waterbirds. For example, even nine years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, populations of cormorants, Pigeon Guillemots, and certain duck species had not fully recovered because populations of the fish that they forage on had not recovered.

• Birds have proved to be excellent indicators of the spread of new diseases introduced through human-mediated enterprises, including West Nile virus and the House Finch eye disease.

• The varied and often unexpected effects of global warming have been shown by studies of birds to include changes in timing of migration and egg laying, sudden drops in prey populations, decoupling of life-history events among component members of ecological communities, and others.

Because birds are such effective bellwethers, some nations have officially adopted the idea of using them as indicators. In Great Britain, for example, the government publishes an annual summary of 15 headline indicators of quality of life, one of which is based on population trends of breeding birds. A number of nonprofit bird conservation organizations also regularly publish state of the birds reports. In the U.S., Audubon published such a report in 2004.

One of the primary reasons that birds are excellent species to use to monitor changes in our environment is that they are the most well-known and easily studied group of organisms on earth. They are conspicuous, often brightly colored and aesthetically appealing to the human eye, with loud songs and other vocalizations, and they live everywhere that people live. Countless books have been published on them, covering everything from identification to art. We may not always know what they are telling us, but the clues birds provide can give scientists a starting point to understanding the complex ecological webs that are impacted by our activities.

One of the finest opportunities available for any of us to contribute to conservation is by participating in monitoring birds through organized surveys—a concept embodied by the term citizen science. There are now dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of opportunities for everyone from the beginning birder to the expert to volunteer to count birds and submit the counts for use in monitoring bird populations and studying various aspects of their biology. Some citizen science programs are national or international in scope—projects like the Christmas Bird Count, Breeding Bird Survey, Great Backyard Bird Count, Project Feederwatch, International Shorebird Survey, eBird, Bird Studies Canada’s Important Bird Areas online monitoring program, North American Birds, Marshbird Monitoring Program, and Hawk Migration Association hawk counts. Others are regional or local—projects like the various state or provincial loon counts and owl surveys, National Wildlife Refuge surveys, state and provincial checklist programs like those ongoing in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Wisconsin, and Montana, and state and provincial breeding bird atlases, to name just a few.

I encourage anyone reading this book, whether amateur or professional, casually interested or avid birder, to make an effort to participate in at least one citizen science project. It is only by having thousands of people collectively reporting their observations from across North America that we will be able to both monitor the changes in bird populations and more fully grasp the intricacies of their ecology. Birds are great indicators if we will only listen to what they are telling us. And by becoming a citizen scientist you not only help the birds but learn more about them yourself. So, if you are not yet a citizen scientist then you should get involved. If you are, get someone else involved. Below I’ve included contact information for a few of the larger citizen science projects but there are literally hundreds of projects from the local to international scales. Contact your local environmental organizations or do an Internet search to find out about state and local citizen science programs.

BREEDING BIRD SURVEY

Website: www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/participate/

CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNT

National Audubon Society

Audubon Science Office

545 Almshouse Road

Ivyland, PA 18974

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.audubon.org

EBIRD

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.ebird.org

GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

159 Sapsucker Woods Road

Ithaca, NY 14850

Phone: [phone] (toll free in U.S.) or

607-254-2473 if calling internationally

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.birdsource.org/gbbc/

OR

National Audubon Society

Audubon Science Office

545 Almshouse Road

Ivyland, PA 18974

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.birdsource.org/gbbc/

THE INTERNATIONAL SHOREBIRD SURVEYS

Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences

PO Box 1770

Manomet, MA 02345

Phone: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.manomet.org

NOCTURNAL OWL MONITORING PROGRAM (CANADA)

Bird Studies Canada

PO Box 160

115 Front Road

Port Rowan, ON, Canada N0E 1M0

Phone: [phone] (toll free in Canada)

Email: [e-mail]

Website: http://www.bsc-eoc.org/national/nationalowls.html

NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS

American Birding Association

4945 N 30th Street, Suite 200

Colorado Springs, CO 80919

Phone: [phone] or 719-578-9703

Website: www.americanbirding.org

PROJECT FEEDERWATCH

In the U.S.:

Cornell Lab of Ornithology

159 Sapsucker Woods Road

Ithaca, NY 14850

Phone: [phone] (toll free)

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/

In Canada:

Bird Studies Canada

PO Box 160

115 Front Road

Port Rowan, ON, Canada N0E 1M0

Phone: [phone] (toll free)

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.bsc-eoc.org/national/pfw.html

PROJECT NEST WATCH

Bird Studies Canada

PO Box 160

115 Front Road

Port Rowan, ON, Canada N0E 1M0

Phone: [phone] (toll free)

Email: [e-mail]

Website: www.bsc-eoc.org/national/nestwatch.html

The State of North American Bird Populations

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A good friend who is not a biologist or birder once said to me upon hearing that there were debates about bird declines, How can birds not have declined? So much of their habitat has been replaced with buildings, factories, and farmland? I think his point is a good one to consider. The numbers of birds and other animals thriving in North America’s grasslands, forests, wetlands, and oceans before European arrival and expansion is beyond comprehension. Imagine 3 billion Passenger Pigeons, 100,000 Eskimo Curlews, 5 million Short-tailed Albatross, 65 million bison, and 33 million green sea turtles! For most species, we don’t have even rough estimates of their former abundance. We can only look at changes in the amount of the habitats they require, and when we do, the statistics are more than a little sobering.¹–⁵

A study by the Nature Conservancy and the Association for Biodiversity Information in 2000 reported that 58% of the area in the lower 48 states no longer supports natural vegetation. They also found that 57% of all ecological communities in the U.S. are imperiled or vulnerable. Research by the World Wildlife Fund in 1999 found that 67 of 76 ecoregions in the 48 contiguous U.S. states were in critical, endangered, or vulnerable condition.⁶,⁷

These numbers are daunting and hard to fully grasp. It helps to look at some familiar habitats. Let’s start with the deciduous and mixed forests of eastern North America. Many of these forests still ring with the sounds of Red-eyed Vireos and American Redstarts each spring and summer. In 1600, approximately 70% of the eastern U.S. was covered with forest. Today, that number stands at 40%. Put in context, the estimated 140 million Red-eyed Vireos alive today doesn’t sound so huge—imagine about 245 million! Or how about those fragrant pine forests of the southern U.S., where many of us have ventured for our life Red-cockaded Woodpecker or Bachman’s Sparrow? It is almost stupefying to realize that southern pine forests once covered 60–90 million acres but now occupy only 3 million acres. It is equally difficult to imagine the number of the now-endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker that inhabited such vast forests—was it hundreds of thousands or millions?⁴,⁷,⁸,⁹,¹⁰

Especially sad to consider is the decline of the cathedral-like bottomland forests and cypress swamps of the southeastern U.S. that echoed with the double-raps of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, the screeches of Carolina Parakeets, and the buzzy songs of the Bachman’s Warbler. The loss and degradation of the habitats that these birds relied upon has been estimated at more than 90%. These species are gone now, though some people, myself included, continue to hope that indisputable evidence of undiscovered populations of Bachman’s Warbler and Ivory-billed Woodpecker still living out their lives in some remote southern swamp will someday be obtained.⁷–⁹,¹²,¹³

The pioneering days of American agriculture in the latter half of the 19th century transformed the midwestern U.S. into the nation’s bread basket but turned our native grasslands to dying memories. The original 167 million acres of tall-grass prairie was reduced by 97% to about 5.3 million acres. Remnants of tallgrass prairie habitat in southern Iowa and northern Missouri are now restricted to 20 sites, each less than 20 acres in size. Today’s population of Henslow’s Sparrow is thought to number about 80,000 and falling in the remaining habitat; the historic population was certainly in the millions. And tallgrass prairie wasn’t the only grassland habitat that was lost. The total loss of prairies in the U.S. and Canada (including tallgrass, mixed-grass, and short-grass prairies) is estimated at 79%. Symbols of the prairie like the Greater Prairie-Chicken and Lesser Prairie-Chicken have dropped to perilously low levels despite once being superabundant. The eastern sub-species of the Greater Prairie-Chicken, the Heath Hen, became extinct in 1932, and the Attwater’s Prairie-Chicken population of the Texas and Louisiana coastal prairies dropped from a million birds historically to a mere 42 individuals in 1996.⁷,¹¹–¹⁶

Moving farther west, consider the sagebrush habitats that were the backdrop of so many cowboy movies. Millions of acres of sagebrush have been destroyed for croplands, and on millions more, sagebrush has been systematically removed to make way for cattle production. Less than 10% of the 84 million acres of the Great Basin Shrub Steppe ecoregion remains as intact habitat. Greater Sage-Grouse have dropped from historic highs of 1.1 million or more to, by one estimate, just 142,000 today, and the Gunnison Sage-Grouse now numbers fewer than 5,000.⁷,⁹,¹⁷

In the western U.S., water has always been at a premium, whether for drinking water, cattle watering, agriculture, power production, or industrial uses. As a result, an estimated 95% of habitat along western rivers and streams (not to mention the aquatic habitat itself) has been lost or degraded in the last 100 years. Suffering the brunt of this destruction are species like Bell’s Vireo, especially Least Bell’s Vireo, and western populations of Black Rail, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and Willow Flycatcher. All of these species have declined dramatically in the western U.S., some from populations that once had to have numbered in the millions.⁸

Along the Pacific Coast, the forests of massive trees awed the early explorers. It didn’t take long, though, before the economic opportunities of cutting down and sawing up the trees became apparent. Since prelogging days, about 96% of the original coastal forest from Canada’s Vancouver Island to Oregon has been removed, and more than 95% of the northern California Redwood forests are now gone. The best known casualty of these changes has been the Marbled Murrelet. Current estimates put its total population (including those in Alaska) at about a half-million birds. The original population certainly had been in the millions.⁷,¹⁸

Of course, some species of birds have increased as a result of the massive habitat changes that have occurred in North America since historical times. Species that thrive in urban environments are the most obvious examples. Introduced species like Rock Pigeons, European Starlings, and House Sparrows marched steadily across the continent after their release on American shores. Native species like American Crow, Black Vulture, Yellow Warbler, American Robin, House Wren, Tufted Titmouse, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Northern Cardinal have seemingly done well, the latter three species increasing their range northward in the eastern U.S. over the last 50 years. It is impossible to know, though, how many Northern Cardinal, Red-bellied Woodpecker, and Tufted Titmouse once inhabited the millions of acres of southern bottomland forest that no longer exist. Many grassland species showed an initial range extension into the northeastern U.S. following the conversion of forests into hayfields. Henslow’s Sparrows bred as far east as New Hampshire, and Sedge Wrens and Loggerhead Shrikes nested regularly throughout New England. Except for occasional rare occurrences, all three species are now gone from the region and most of their original native grassland habitat has now also been destroyed. In Illinois, where only 2,500 acres of the original 21 million acres of tallgrass prairie remain, Horned Larks, which can do well in open tilled land, increased from an estimated 1.5 million in 1907 to 4.5 million by 1958. But again, we have no way to know how many Horned Larks were around when grazing bison, fires, and unimaginably huge prairie dog towns provided millions of acres of the kind of sparsely vegetated habitat that they prefer. It is fortunate that some bird species, like those mentioned above, were able to adapt to the habitat changes of the last 200 years. Sadly, though, an overwhelming number of bird species have not adapted and are now of conservation concern.⁴,⁸,⁹,¹⁴,¹⁹,²⁰–²³

LISTS, LISTS, LISTS

Many species have been identified as being of conservation concern through various formal lists created by different agencies and organizations. Let’s consider a few of these lists. The most well known is the list of Endangered or Threatened species given protections under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. As of 2006 there were 92 species, subspecies, or populations of birds on the list. Eighteen birds on this list (20%) are now considered extinct or likely extinct, or exist only in captivity. While more than half of the birds protected under the Endangered Species Act list are from Hawaii or islands of the Pacific, a surprising 43 occur in the continental U.S. and Alaska. That may not sound like much to worry about when you consider the 700 or so species that breed in the U.S.. But consider two things: First, only a few species have been given sufficient resources that their numbers have increased to levels that would warrant removal from the list; most species on the list have continued to decline, and many island-inhabiting birds on the list have already gone extinct. We will never again hear the haunting song of the Kaua’i o’o echoing from the high-elevation rainforest of the island of Kaua’i—the last known survivor sang futilely for a mate until 1987 and then the species disappeared from the earth forever. This happened despite the fact that the species had been listed as Endangered since 1967. Second, because listing under the Endangered Species Act is a policy process, not a scientific process, a great many species do not appear on the list that are in fact endangered or threatened. The Endangered Species Act has been amazingly successful when resources have been applied through it to restoring endangered and threatened species. There is no doubt that it is one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever enacted in the U.S. and remains vitally important to protecting many endangered bird species within the changing political context in which it must operate, but it has never included all endangered and threatened birds under its protective umbrella.²⁴,²⁵

Perhaps the most widely accepted, scientifically derived list of globally endangered and threatened birds is that of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Administered for IUCN by BirdLife International, the list, which is better known as the Red List, contains only those species that meet one or more of a number of strict criteria. For example, species that have shown a well documented decline of 80% or more in the last 10 years are included as Critically Endangered. Those that have declined by more than 50% in the last 10 years are considered Endangered. Species whose entire population consists of fewer than 250 adults are listed as Critically Endangered as well, and there are a number of other similar, very specific and data-driven criteria for listing. In the continental U.S. and Alaska, there were 36 species that appeared on the IUCN Red List in 2000 and 16 (44%) of these were not listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. ²⁵

There are a number of other lists of birds of conservation concern published by different groups, each using a slightly different methodology to prioritize species. For example, National Audubon released an Audubon WatchList in 2002 that included 160 species (17% of total avifauna) from the continental U.S. and Alaska, plus an additional 41 species from Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The American Bird Conservancy’s Green List, published in 2003, contained 187 species (20% of total avifauna) from the continental U.S. and Alaska, plus an additional 33 species from Hawaii. In 2002, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its Birds of Conservation Concern list, which included 131 species at the national level (12% of total avifauna including Hawaii and Pacific Islands) and 275 species at both national and regional levels (26% of total avifauna including Hawaii and Pacific Islands). The 2004 Partners in Flight National Watch List included 100 species (22%) of 448 landbird species found in the continental U.S., Alaska, and Canada. The U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan in 2000 rated 44 (88%) of 50 regularly occurring shorebird species as being of conservation concern. The 2002 North American Waterbird Conservation Plan rated 106 (71%) of 150 waterbirds as of conservation concern (including those species for which there was sufficient information and including species from parts of the Pacific, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America). Taken together, the various lists of birds of conservation concern in North America include more than 500 species.⁹,²⁶–³⁰

BENCHMARKS

All of these lists can leave even the most initiated among us feeling dazed. Without some past benchmark, how can one go about assessing what these numbers mean? It seems a reasonable goal at least to ensure that there are no further human-induced extinctions. The best research into background global extinction rates for bird species over geological time periods (millions of years) has estimated that one species has gone extinct about every 100 years worldwide. Since about the year 1500, that rate has greatly changed. In the last 500 years since humans have come to dominate the planet, the extinction rate has skyrocketed to an average of about 30 per 100 years (151 bird species are considered to have become extinct since 1500). Put another way, this equates to the loss of a bird species about every three years. Since 1900, the rate has nearly doubled to the loss of a species every two years (61 species since 1900). All of these facts indicate an ecological system far out of balance with historical extinction rates.²⁵,³¹,³²

Further, if we make the assumption that a long-term declining abundance trend signals a species becoming at greater risk of eventual extinction (the smaller the population, the higher the probability of extinction), then one can also argue that we should be concerned if more than a handful of species exhibit continuing, long-term declines in abundance. Of course, we expect populations of birds to go up and down from year to year through births, deaths, emigration, and immigration. In years with large outbreaks of spruce bud-worms in the boreal forest of Canada and Alaska, for example, Tennessee, Cape May, and Bay-breasted warblers can vastly increase in numbers as they are able to raise large broods to fledging by feeding them on superabundant budworm larvae. Harsh winter weather can kill large numbers of Carolina Wrens and Eastern Bluebirds so that their populations plummet. From one year to the next, we would expect on average that about half of the species in North America would increase and half decrease.³²–³⁷

But over long enough time periods, declining species must increase again. If they don’t, they eventually will become extinct. Without human-caused problems or a major catastrophe like a meteor strike, we would expect that only a few bird species would continue to become fewer, year after year, decade after decade. In fact, the number of bird species in North America that have shown long-term declining trends is more than a handful of species. Of the 424 species that occur on enough Breeding Bird Survey routes to estimate trends, more than 100 showed statistically significant declines from 1966 to 2003. At least 35 of these species had declined by 50% or more in the 37 years since the survey began. Especially troubling are the 70–90% long-term declines of species like the Cerulean Warbler, Henslow’s Sparrow, Pinyon Jay, Lesser Yellowlegs, Sprague’s Pipit, and Rusty Blackbird.³⁸

A closer examination of Breeding Bird Survey population trends (1966–2003) indicates some broader problems. For example, more birds of grassland habitats are in decline than those from other habitats—68% are showing significant declines as compared to 28% overall. Along with Henslow’s Sparrow and Sprague’s Pipit, the list of declining species includes Baird’s Sparrow, Greater Prairie-Chicken, and Long-billed Curlew. Birds that breed in shrub–scrub habitats are also showing higher-than-expected numbers of declining species (36%), and the list includes Brewer’s Sparrow, Bell’s Vireo, Golden-winged Warbler, and Painted Bunting. As a group, forest-breeding species are not showing disproportionate numbers of declining species, but 31 of the 131 species adequately surveyed are showing statistically significant declines, including Cerulean Warbler, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Rufous Hummingbird, Blue Grouse, Wood Thrush, Canada Warbler, and Prothonotary Warbler.³⁸

THE SPECIAL CASE OF HAWAII

To birders, Hawaii represents the exotic, birds found nowhere else in the world, with names like I’iwi, Elapaio, and Po’o-uli, frequenting the hot, humid, rain-drenched forests on the upper slopes of mountains rising from the blue waters of the Pacific. Although it is part of the United States, geographically the Hawaiian archipelago is unique, located as it is more than 2,000 miles from the closest continents. With more than 9,000 endemic plant and animals species, ecologically, too, Hawaii is vastly different from any other part of the U.S. The species that evolved there over millions of years from the occasional off-course migrants that stumbled upon the islands are or were unlike anything else found on Earth. Sadly, Hawaii has also come to be known as the land of extinction.

More than any other part of the U.S., Hawaii and the tropical Pacific embodies the harshest lessons of conservation. An astounding array of thrushes, honeycreepers, and finches that took millennia to evolve in the luxurious forests of these isolated islands, were reduced to only a handful of species in less than 250 years. Since 1778, when the first Europeans arrived in Hawaii, at least 29 species have become extinct or are likely extinct; an additional 28 species are endangered or threatened. Several birds have become extinct just in the last 25 years. They include both the Kaua’i o’o and Kama’o, two forest thrushes endemic to Kaua’i that were last detected in 1987 and 1993 respectively. The Po’o-uli, a strikingly plumaged honeycreeper first discovered in 1973, was reduced to a single individual within 30 years. The last known bird died in captivity in 2004. There may be no other place on earth where so many of today’s ornithologists have witnessed, in their own lifetimes, the extinction of so many species they themselves have studied and observed.

The factors that have led to Hawaii’s enormous conservation crisis read like a textbook litany of the causes of endangerment and extinction the world over: habitat loss and degradation, invasive species and disease, and uncontrolled hunting. The problems for the birds of Hawaii started 1,500 years ago when the first humans arrived there. Needing food to survive, these Polynesians brought about the extinction of a host of flightless rails and waterfowl that had evolved on the islands in the absence of predators. The Polynesians also destroyed most of the drier lowland forest for agriculture and building materials before the arrival of Europeans, relegating birds and other animals that required such habitat either to marginal, higher elevation forests or to extinction. Fossil evidence suggests that at least 60 bird species became extinct after Polynesians colonized Hawaii.

Polynesians had already imported some non-native, invasive species, the most notable being the pig. But the invasive species problem was taken to a new level after the arrival of Europeans. Sailors saw islands as places to establish food storehouses so that fresh meat could be obtained in the midst of long voyages. On island after island across the world’s seas, goats, cows, pigs, donkeys, horses, rabbits, and occasionally other creatures, were released with the hope that they would survive and multiply. On many of the Hawaiian Islands, these nonnative animals flourished. Just as flightless birds had evolved in the absence of major predators, so too had plants evolved without any major herbivores to select for thorns and spines and nasty sap that would deter things that would eat them. The plants were a defenseless smorgasbord to these nonnative invaders, and the forests, as well as the many species that relied upon them, quickly suffered because of it.

Other nonnative species arrived by mistake. Mosquitoes were thought to have been first introduced in the early 1800s when sailors newly arrived from Mexico dumped the remaining water from the bottom of their barrels into a stream before filling them with freshwater. The old water, which they had picked up in Mexico, apparently contained mosquito larvae. Unfortunately for many Hawaiian birds, mosquitoes were the carriers of new diseases to which the birds had no resistance. Like the Polynesians of the Hawaiian Islands who were decimated by measles and other diseases brought in with the European sailors, the birds too began quickly disappearing from avian pox and avian malaria. On some islands it happened amazingly fast. Ornithologists of the late 1800s reported time and again that within a few years native birds went from being abundant to nonexistent in forests that were largely intact. Eventually, the last stronghold of many native Hawaiian birds was in the marginal habitat of the upper-elevation forests where the temperatures were too low for mosquitoes to survive.

Today, a complex dynamic has arisen among the scores of nonnative species that have been introduced, one that threatens to cascade into an extinction free-fall. Much of the lower-elevation habitats are dominated by nonnative plants (more than 4,600 have been introduced to Hawaii) with entire communities of nonnative birds, mammals, and insects. Populations of feral hogs, sheep, cattle, and goats that come into higher-elevation native forest eat the native plants and disturb the soil, providing a foothold for aggressive nonnative plants to invade and displace the native plants. The invading mammals also often leave muddy pools in their wake that provide perfect breeding habitat for mosquitoes, therefore enabling the mosquitoes to move into regions that were once mosquito-free. In addition, mosquito varieties that can withstand cooler temperatures are now creeping higher and higher into mountain forests. It may be these cascading dynamics that account for the rapid disappearance of birds like the Po’o-uli and others just in the last few decades.

Conservationists and scientists are working feverishly to find and implement solutions to Hawaii’s extinction crisis. Miles of fencing have been put in place to keep feral mammals out of preserves. In other areas, hunts have been established to control populations of wild pigs, and trapping is undertaken to control introduced rats and mongoose—major predators of the eggs and young of birds. The Nature Conservancy, Hawaii Audubon, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the State of Hawaii are among many groups that have been very active in establishing more protected areas and trying to slow the rate of fragmentation and loss of habitat. Captive breeding programs established in Hawaii and staffed by the San Diego Zoo have shown success in raising birds in captivity and releasing them back into the wild to augment local populations. But it is clear that Hawaii’s remaining native avifauna is in a race for its life. Without continued financial and political support of conservation activities in Hawaii, more species will lose their frantic race for survival.

Since a full discussion of the conservation of the birds of Hawaii would require a book of its own, I have focused in this book on the birds of North America. Fortunately, a number of books and other material have been published that highlight the conservation issues in Hawaii, including Evolution, Ecology, Conservation, and Management of Hawaiian Birds: A Vanishing Avifauna, edited by J. M. Scott, S. Conant, and C. van Riper, an excellent chapter on Hawaii in The Condor’s Shadow by David Wilcove, The Birds of Hawaii and the Tropical Pacific by Doug Pratt, Phillip Bruner, and Delwyn Berrett, and Birdwatcher’s Guide to Hawaii by Rick Soehren.

CONCERN VERSUS RESPONSIBILITY

Given that there are more than 500 bird species in North America considered of conservation concern by one group or another, and given that we have limited resources to carry out conservation work, conservationists must decide which species will receive the benefit of those limited resources. Generally, precedence is given first to those species that are most in danger of becoming extinct.

But as groups started coming together to work on bird conservation problems, an interesting issue came to light. An organization focusing on bird conservation in Ontario, for example, has little opportunity to help most of North America’s most globally endangered species. California Condors, Whooping Cranes, and Marbled Murrelets are not part of Ontario’s avifauna. Yes, there are a few globally endangered and threatened species that occur regularly enough in Ontario that the efforts of an organization focused on the province could contribute to the overall well being of the species, but most of North America’s most endangered birds don’t occur within the province. Contrast this with an agency working on bird conservation in California that might be focused on Snowy Plovers, Spotted Owls, California Condors, Marbled Murrelets, California Gnatcatchers, Xantus’s Murrelets, Tricolored Blackbirds, Bell’s Vireos, and more. Does this mean that an Ontario group has little to do? Hardly.

California has an extremely wide range of habitats and an unfortunate history of massive habitat conversion and loss, both factors that account for the large number of endangered and threatened species that occur there. Ontario, on the other hand, has an equally important responsibility. The northern two-thirds of Ontario is part of the largest remaining wilderness habitat left in the Western Hemisphere—North America’s boreal forest region. At 1.5 billion acres, the boreal, stretching from Alaska to Newfoundland, is 12 times the size of California and is estimated to support over 3 billion birds, including more than 50% of the populations of nearly 100 species. While conservationists in places like California are struggling to hold on to species for which there is immediate concern for their survival, people in places like Ontario are charged with the awesome long-term responsibility of ensuring that this last, great reservoir of bird habitat—North America’s bird nursery—does not become lost and degraded like those in most of the rest of the world.³⁹

While I have used California and Ontario as examples at opposite ends of a spectrum, the point is that conservationists tend to focus on rarity because that is where there is most immediate need—without action, a species may be lost forever once it reaches perilously low numbers. But without long-term planning, more and more species will edge closer and closer to this fate. Long-term planning forces us to correctly think about places of abundant bird life—the remaining still-intact large expanses of habitat like the boreal forest in the North and the Amazon basin in the South, the wetlands that still harbor massive numbers of shorebirds during migration, and the island nesting colonies that still have tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of seabirds. These are the last great conservation opportunities of our generation—places where we still have the chance to save intact ecosystems and full complements of species woven together in ways unchanged for thousands of years.

BAD NEWS—GOOD NEWS

While the overall health of bird populations (and by extension, our overall environment) is clearly at a substandard level, we are fortunate in North America that we do have large numbers of people interested in making things better. For people committed to restoring and protecting bird populations and the habitats upon which they depend, there are an almost infinite number of ways to get involved. The species accounts in this book are full of opportunities to make a difference, as is the chapter on the state of bird conservation.

In my own view, the recent weakening of governmental environmental policies in the U.S. will certainly result in further declines of many of the birds of highest conservation concern—something I see as a squandering of the natural resources that are a birthright of our children. But the ability of government leaders to weaken such policies is a result of a failing among those of us concerned about the health of birds and our environment. Concerned citizens need to speak out for the values they care about both individually and through organizations that share those values.

For the Labrador Duck, the Carolina Parakeet, and the Passenger Pigeon, it is too late. My Great-Grandfather Reed could have taken his young daughter Beatrice to see Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon, before it died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. My Grandmother Beatrice could have taken her young son (my father) down to Louisiana in 1944 to see the last known breeding pair of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. But my dad would never have the chance to take me to see these birds. Nor would he have the opportunity to take me to see the last documented Bachman’s Warbler that sang from a swamp in South Carolina in 1962 or the last known Eskimo Curlew that chased grasshoppers in the grass on Galveston Island, Texas, that same year—two years before I was born.

My own son also will never see these creatures (except, let’s hope, maybe an Ivory-billed Woodpecker), but he has learned to identify a Bald Eagle when we see one perched along the river near our house in Maine. Bald Eagles are now quite common in many parts of North America because of the legacy of positive environmental policies like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act, and from the legacy of government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, among others. My son will see a California Condor soaring over the massive redwoods of Big Sur, California. He will see Whooping Cranes dancing in a marsh on the Texas coast. He will see Brown Pelicans diving for fish off a Florida beach. But will there be a Florida Scrub-Jay like the one he saw when he was four months old—a bird from a dwindling population being overtaken by development along Florida’s east coast—still living in the sugar-sand oak thickets of Florida so that he can show one to his own daughter or son?

The success at restoring populations of Bald Eagle, Brown Pelican, California Condor, and Whooping Crane shows us that it is possible to improve the health of bird populations. But people—regular people like you and me—need to get involved, speak up, buy recycled, save energy, take a child birding, vote for candidates who care about the kind of home we will leave to our children and future generations. Start a project to save a piece of habitat, restore a grassland, or reduce levels of harmful chemicals in your watersheds. Do whatever you can so that all of our children will have healthy air to breath, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to see the birds that are our heritage.

REFERENCES

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