State of the Birds

The LA Times published an article on changes in bird populations, Some birds defy overall plunge in bird numbers, and a friend asked me for my thoughts on it, especially compared to early research and studies showing that in North America we’ve lost over 3 billion birds since 1970.

I have thoughts.

My first reaction was Life is complicated.

Something lost in the initial “3 billion birds lost” report was that number was heavily weighted to a relatively few very common species.

That said, focusing on THAT ignores that we are seeing population losses in many species, because of climate change and our impact on the environment and bird habitat, and that trend is pretty clearly increasing.

But as conditions change, some species find it to their benefit and others are badly impacted by it, so the changes are not across the board. Ravens have been doing really well because they’ve been adapting to more urban environments. Crows were massively impacted by West Nile, but have since recovered.

The loss of old growth forests have really hurt Spotted Owls, but the Barred Owl has been expanding territory quite successfully, and eating many of the Spotted Owls that are left (among other owls and prey; Great Horned Owls are also a target of them).

The predation by Barred Owls on the endangered Spotted Owl is so significant that a program was developed to cull large numbers of Barred Owls in hopes of protecting the Spotted Owls — which, as you might imagine, has been both a very complicated and emotional issue within the birding community. And I think it’s important to emphasize that the biggest threat to Spotted Owls has been loss of habitat caused by logging of old growth forests, and if we humans hadn’t been doing that for centuries, the Barred Owls likely wouldn’t have been this significant an issue. But of course, we don’t want to grapple with the primary problem because that impacts humans. So instead we kill owls. (my take on the Barred Owl culling program: it’s probably necessary, it probably won’t ultimately succeed, and I’m very very glad I wasn’t the person who had to make the call to implement it. But given we can’t undo the habitat loss, and I’m JUST as uncomfortable with the idea of doing nothing as am of culling the Barred Owls, I reluctantly support the program based on the decisions of those I know studied and struggled over this issue)

There is, overall, a loss of numbers but more importantly, a loss of diversity, and that is the thing I’d be paying closest attention to, It’s an indicator of larger negative issues in the overall environment, one we should be trying to figure out and mitigate, but well (glares at Washington D.C.)

So yeah, the 3 billion birds lost number is true, and it is also true that some species are increasing numbers and thriving. But the macro picture overall to me is that things are getting worse, for them and for us, but there’s still a general attitude of ignoring the issues by those I wish cared more for the planet we’re handing over to future generations.

Should we worry about this? My take is definitely. First, I think the world is a lesser place if we have plenty of birds, but they’re all crows and robins and not the much wider diversity of species we have today — but these changes also indicate an ongoing set of changes to the planet we live on and are part of, and those changes are also impacting us — humans — in increasingly damaging and negative ways. Birds are both a problem we need to grapple with and solve, but also an alarm going off of changes going on that are making things worse for people as well, and damage being done that will be impacting this planet we will be handing off to our kids and future generations to live in.

And it’s a reminder that life is complicated. We like easy answers and solutions, but they rarely are the reality.