The Plight of Birdsaviculturalsocietynsw.org/_PDFs/EP153B.pdf · greatly compromised. Birds pollinate crops, disperse seeds, control insects and rodents, and clean up carrion. For

WORLD•WATCHWorking For A Sustainable Future

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The Plight of Birds

Excerpted from May/June 2002 WORLD WATCH magazine

by Howard Youth

Illustrations by Tony Disley

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© 2002, Worldwatch Institute

http://www.worldwatch.org

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ery little remains of the rich wildlife that once flourished in Europe. Most of the wolves, bears, and bison are long gone.

The few fragments of wilderness that remainare highly valued. Among them, not many cancompare with Spain’s Doñana National Park,which lies on the Mediterranean coast a short dis-tance across from Africa, and which is habitat toanimals from two continents—and to an extraor-dinary variety of birds. Doñana’s 50,000 hectares(123,000 acres) of marsh, dune, brush, and forestare one of the largest remaining breeding groundsfor the endangered Spanish imperial eagle (Aquilaadalberti) and the wintering grounds of hundredsof thousands of waterfowl.

Yet, Doñana is a paradise in peril. Siltationfrom upriver and water demands from irrigatedfarms surrounding the park are drying out marsh-es earlier in the year than in decades past. Nestingwaterfowl such as the once abundant and now raremarbled duck (Marmaronetta angustirostris) areleft high and dry. Cut off from the water, the birdshave poor prospects for finding food and fewplaces to escape foxes and other predators. Non-native eucalyptus trees, which were planted beforethe area was declared a park in 1969, have beengrowing fast and choking out native vegetation.And in 1998, a zinc mine reservoir just north ofthe park burst and spilled 5 million cubic meters ofacidic water—heavily laced with cadmium, lead,copper, and other heavy metals—into the river.

18 WORLD•WATCH May/June 2002

The Plight of BirdsToday, more than a thousand species of birds face extinction. Many more

are in steady decline. Significantly, the strategies

that can stop this attrition are the same strategies needed to

achieve a sustainable human future.

by Howard Youth

Illustrations by Tony Disley

V

The spill covered almost 10,000 hectares (25,000acres) with toxic sludge, saturating the park’s bufferzone and killing thousands of fish and birds, leavingmuch of the surviving wildlife contaminated at levelsthat likely impair their ability to breed.

Threats to Doñana’s birdlife exemplify the rangeof pressures on many of the world’s birds, which areincreasingly in jeopardy despite their ability to flyfrom one place to another. From the nearly 3-meter-tall African ostrich to Cuba’s 6-centimeter-long beehummingbird, more than 9,800 bird species live onthe planet. They perform essential natural services,without which our own existence would begreatly compromised. Birds pollinate crops,disperse seeds, control insects androdents, and clean up carrion. Forthose of us who pay more atten-tion, the colors, songs, flight, andvaried behaviors of birds pro-vide great inspiration. Yet,millions of us may be awareof birds’ presence only onthe margins of our con-

sciousness. As a result, many bird species appear like-ly to die off in the coming decades.

Unprecedented Decline

Like Doñana’s wildfowl, most of the world’sdeclining bird species face multiple threats, virtuallyall of them from human activities. Even when aspecies is endangered by a single threat, remediationis difficult; but when the dangers come from severaldirections, the difficulty grows exponentially. The

ostrich (Struthio camelus), for exam-ple, is being decimated both by

hunting and by habitat loss,especially in the northern andwestern part of its wide butincreasingly fragmented range

in Africa. The world’s largestbird, it lays the world’s largest

egg. But neither bird nor egg isany match for human hunters.

“They’re getting it from both sides.Adults are being killed and the eggs are

WORLD•WATCH May/June 2002 19

Black harrierA grassland species that has adaptedsomewhat to nesting and living insouthern African farmland, the blackharrier is vulnerable to pesticide poisoning and disturbance. Fewer than 1,000 remain, of which evenfewer are protected in parks.

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being robbed,” says Smithsonian Institution scientistSteve Monfort. In 2001, Monfort participated in awildlife survey in Chad, and found no ostriches—only years-old shattered egg fragments. And in mostparts of Africa where scattered ostriches do remain totake their chances with hunters, the fragile grasslandson which they depend for their varied diet of leaves,seeds, roots, and insects are being chewed up byover-grazing of livestock.

Variants of this story are being repeated on everycontinent, including Antarctica. In North America,massive displacement of native grasslands for mono-culture farming and grazing is driving out two speciesof prairie chickens (Tympanuchus phasianellus andTympanuchus pallidicinctus). In Eurasia, the greatbustard (Otis tarda) and three other species of bus-tard are in rapid decline—there, too, as a result ofwhat ecologist Paul Goriup calls the “generally lowpriority afforded to the conservation and sustainableuse of grasslands, steppes, and rangelands through-out the world.” In France and Spain, the pin-tailedsandgrouse (Pterocles alchata) is in biological freefall,

for similar reasons. As the humanpopulation expands (from 1.6billion to more than 6 billion inthe past century alone), theEarth itself is becoming increas-

ingly humanized—meaning thatlandscapes are being deforested,drained, paved, and chemicallyaltered to make way for Homo sapiens. Generally, the more human-dominated a landscape is, the more

biologically poor and unstable itbecomes overall.

Over the past twocenturies, 103 species of birds have goneextinct. Among thosenever to be seen again arethe New Zealand laugh-ing owl (Sceloglaux albi-facies), the Cuban macaw

(Ara tricolor), and the once spectacularlyabundant North Ameri-can passenger pigeon(Ectopistes migrato-rius). In the next onecentury 1,186 speciescould go extinct,according to Threat-ened Birds of the World,a comprehensive studypublished in 2000 bythe global conserva-tion group BirdLife

International. And a far greater number, perhapsapproaching 6,000 species, have gone into generaldecline. In Great Britain, for example, 139 of 247breeding bird species are in moderate to rapiddecline, according to annual surveys. Some Aus-tralian ornithologists estimate that one in five of theirnative birds are threatened with extinction in the not-too-distant future.

Many biologists argue that extinction is just thelast stage of decline, occurring long after a speciesceases to function as a natural part of its ecosystem.As local populations die out, remaining populationsbecome isolated, their genetic diversity impoverished.“Avian diversity is in major decline,” says Nigel Col-lar, an ornithologist who monitors world bird diver-sity at BirdLife International. “Not only are moreand more species edging closer to extinction, but anunknown number of subspecies and populations aredisappearing, and species with continuous ranges arebreaking up into isolated pockets of organisms,allowing less and less genetic interchange. Sometimeswhen we lose what we think is a mere population, we

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Steller’s sea-eagleA predator and scavenger native to theeastern coast of Russia and the Japaneseisland of Hokkaido, the Steller’s sea-eagle is losing out to habitat destructionand, indirectly, to river pollution andoverfishing, which are forcing the fishthat it preys on into decline. In someareas, these birds scavenge deer car-casses, risking lead poisoning from shotembedded in the meat.


may be losing a virtual species, in terms of its genet-ic variation. And what is true for birds is of coursetrue for all of the Earth’s life-forms.”

The Greatest Threat

Habitat loss and degradation endangers morebirds than any other factor. Habitat is routinelydestroyed by commercial logging, slash-and-burnclearing, industrial or urban development, intensivefarming, and over-grazing, among other land uses.According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organi-zation’s State of the World’s Forests report, the planet islosing 9.4 million hectares (over 23 million acres) offorest cover per year, even though that calculationcounts all the natural forest that’s converted into plan-tations as still forested, which from a bird’s standpointis a further loss. Of all the species identified byBirdLife International as threatened, 85 percent areaffected by habitat loss. Of these, more than 900 livein forests, almost 400 in grasslands, and 150 in wet-lands.

The diversity of birds, like that of insects, mam-mals, or trees, is highest in the tropics. Predictably,the greatest numbers of threatened bird species alsolive in the tropics, particularly in Asia and Central andSouth America, where the human population is stillgrowing rapidly. But while tropical forests haveattracted the most public attention, less-heraldedhabitats face threats just as great. Grasslands, whichonce covered large areas of all continents exceptAntarctica, have largely disappeared—and with themmany birds, including once-abundant prairie-chick-ens, bustards, and sandgrouse. In North America, thegreat grasslands that covered 40 percent of what isnow the United States when the Europeans firstarrived have declined to 1 percent of the countrytoday. The prairie dog population has declined by98 percent, and birds that once maintainedecological relationships with these colonialrodents, such as the burrowing owl(Athene cunicularia), which nests in

the animals’ old burrows, have largely disappeared.In forested areas, woodland birds are declining as

their habitat is increasingly fragmented—cut up byroads, plowed fields, and housing tracts. Fragmenta-tion dries out forest edges, changes plant composi-tion, increases vulnerability to storms, fires, anddisease, and clears the way for invasive plants and ani-mals. In North America, wood thrush and other for-est songbird populations have diminished becausewhen forests are fragmented, they are more easilyinvaded by the brown-headed cowbird, an interloperthat lays its eggs in other species’ nests—much to thedetriment of the hosts’ own young.

Forest remnants are also more likely to be raidedfor firewood or fence posts, even if they are not beingformally logged, and the loss of much-sought-afterdead trees severely limits nesting possibilities for par-rots, owls, and other cavity-nesting birds. Further-more, trees near edges are more subject to winddamage and the removal of loose bark, which wouldnormally be a foraging site for birds such as Aus-tralia’s crested shrike-tits (Falcunculus frontatus).Meanwhile, North American researchers have foundthat nesting populations of migrant birds such asscarlet tanagers and broad-winged hawks still thrivewhere woodlands remain extensive and contiguous,despite increased migratory perils and habitatdestruction on their wintering grounds.

In many countries, reforestation programs have increased overalltree cover in thepast few decades.

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Superb pittaFound only on the Papua NewGuinean island of Manus, this strikingblack, scarlet, and blue bird spends itslife cloaked in forest. Deforestationand introduced cats and dogs mayaffect its population, but few scientistshave explored this remote area and noformal surveys document the where-abouts of this mysterious creature.

oil spill

habitat loss;exotic invasion

communicationstower collisions

long-linefishing

woodlandfragmentation

poisoning; exoticinvasion

oil spill

oil drilling

poisoning

cagebirdtrade

bushmeathunting

oil spill

overhunting industrialfarming

HAWAII

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BIRD WATCHThese are a few of the places where heavy losses orextinctions of birds have been linked to particular causes.

Crisis areas


Countries with the highestnumbers of threatenedbird species


But those programs have put more emphasis onspeeding up the production of wood or pulp than onprotecting biodiversity. Tropical and subtropicalforesters typically plant fast-growing, non-nativeeucalyptus, casuarina, and pine. In the southeasternUnited States and other temperate zones, forestersoften replace natural forests with plantations of justone type of pine. These monotypic stands, lackingthe plant and age diversity of natural forests, offer fewbird species an adequate replacement for the originalhabitat.

Wetlands, the cradle of life for many species,remain under siege from industrial and agriculturalpollution, infill and draining for construction or farm-ing, or water diversions for irrigation or city watersupplies. Increasingly, wildlife managers responsiblefor protecting wetlands in drier areas have had toacquire water rights to keep their protected areas wetand therefore welcoming to birds and other wildlife.Dropping water tables and rising soil salinity in Aus-tralia and other arid countries have destroyed once-extensive bird habitats, as well as farmland. AnAustralian government study, for example, estimatedin 2000 that up to 1.5 million hectares (4.6 millionacres) of the continent’s wildlife habitat will be threat-ened by salt accumulation over the next 50 years.

Aside from being vital nesting grounds for birds,many of the world’s wetlands are key stopover sitesfor millions of transcontinental migrants, on coasts orbays where the birds pause to rest and refuel beforeor after trans-oceanic journeys. Major examplesinclude China’s Deep Bay, Surinam’s coastal mud-flats, Alaska’s Copper River Delta, and Australia’sGulf of Carpentaria. Other stopover sites—favoredby storks, hawks, and myriad songbirds—include nar-row land corridors such as those at Gibraltar;Turkey’s Bosporus Strait; Eilat, Israel; Point Pelee,Canada; and the coastal Mexican city of Veracruz. Inmany cases, habitats at these key areas are shrinkingdue to development.

The Chemical Menace

The worldwide thirst for oil sends tankers criss-crossing oceans and estuaries in a non-stop game ofnavigational roulette—resulting in hundreds of spillseach year. The largest of these accidents have drawnworldwide attention to the effects of oil on ecosys-tems and birds. The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill killed atleast 250,000 birds. A 1994 spill off South Africakilled 5,000 African penguins (Spheniscus demersus),and six years later another spill in the same areathreatened up to 40 percent of the remaining popu-lation. (Catastrophe was averted when thousands ofvolunteers rescued and relocated many of the birds.)A 1999 spill off of France’s Brittany Coast killed anestimated 100,000 to 200,000 birds of 40 species. In

overhunting

overhunting

fragmentedwoodlands

exoticinvasion

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White-tailed swallowScientists know little about the statusand habitat needs of the white-tailedswallow, a species found only within a small range in southern Ethiopia.While not yet endangered,it couldbecome vulnerable if its acacia-studded savanna habitat is convertedto grazing pastures.

January 2001, an Ecuadorian tanker spill off theGalapagos Islands similarly threatened many endem-ic species (species found only in one place), includingthe world’s rarest gull, the lava gull (Larus fuligi-nosus), and the Galapagos penguin (Spheniscus men-diculus). Fortunately, the current swept much of theslick clear of the islands.

Sometimes the chemical menace begins right atthe point of raw materials extraction. Proposed drillingin the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would put therisk of oil-contamination not only in the middle of amajor caribou fawning ground, but also amidst nest-ing grounds for shorebirds and waterfowl that migratefrom Alaska to southern North America, South Amer-ica, Australia, and Asia. Drilling projects in Ecuadorand Peru threaten fragile rainforests that rank amongthe world’s areas of highest bird diversity.

Pesticides affect millions of birds worldwide, bothin the water and on land. The persistent pesticideDDT builds up in fish-eating birds’ tissues and causeswidespread nesting failure—as was seen in the UnitedStates in the 1950s and 1960s. After U.S. law bannedDDT in 1972, the country’s peregrine falcon, baldeagle, osprey, and brown pelican populationsrebounded. In 2000, 120 countries signed a pesticidetreaty that included a phase-out of DDT use else-where. But DDT has not gone away. The organochlo-rine pesticide is still used to control mosquitoes andother pests in many tropical countries (see “Malaria,Mosquitoes, and DDT,” beginning on page 10 of thisissue), and it persists in soil and water even in placeswhere its use was discontinued 30 years ago.

Perhaps nothing highlights DDT’s persistence aswell as the 1998 bird die-off at Lake Apopka Restora-tion Area northwest of Orlando, Florida. There, over7,200 hectares (about 18,000 acres) of marshlandalong the north shore of the lake had been diked offand converted to agricultural fields beginning in theearly 1900s. In the late 1990s, the Florida state gov-ernment, with some federal contributions, boughtback the farms and land managers flooded the formercorn fields and other cropland to control weeds andstart restoring the marshland. More than 170 speciesof birds—including an estimated 40,000 individualson a single day in December 1998—were attractedby the shallow habitat created by the flooding.

At the time, some observers considered LakeApopka to be among the most bird-rich inland habi-tats in North America, especially for winteringspecies, including white pelicans. However, betweenNovember 1998 and March 1999, about 400 whitepelicans died there, and another 500—likely birdsdispersing from the area—were found dead in other


São Tomé grosbeakOnce known only from 19th centurymuseum specimens, the São Tomé gros-beak was rediscovered in 1991. It nestsin the remnant forest of the little islandof São Tomé off the west coast of Africa.Introduced predators—black rats, monamonkeys, civets, and weasels—maythreaten this rare songbird.

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parts of the state. Preliminary investigationby the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service deter-mined that the fish-eating birds hadbeen poisoned by organochlorine pes-ticides such as toxaphene, dieldrin,and DDT derivatives, all of whichhad been used on the farmfields for decades. The fieldswere drained by earlyspring 1999 and remaindry. Extensive research isunderway to better under-stand the fates of, and therisks posed by, the agricul-tural chemicals there.

The saga of the declin-ing Swainson’s hawk, amigratory raptor thatbreeds in the AmericanWest, provides anotherexample of powerful pesti-cides run amok. In late1995 and early 1996, anestimated 20,000 of thesehawks—about 5 percent of the birds’already declining population—died after eatinggrasshoppers in Argentine alfalfa, corn, and sunflowerfields that had been sprayed with the pesticidemonocrotophos, a product of the Ciba-Geigy compa-ny. After an international public outcry, Ciba-Geigyoffered to buy the chemical back from the farmers,and the Argentine government banned any furtherspraying of it in Swainson’s hawk wintering areas.

Finally, there is the poisoning that occurs as anafter-effect of hunting. Waterfowl that escape beingshot by hunters often die of lead poisoning, afteringesting spent shot. Many countries now ban theuse of lead shot, and the list of such countries isgrowing, but thousands of birds still die when theymistake shot for food, or for the small stones theynormally swallow to grind food in their gizzards. Thesame fate awaits loons in North America, when theyeat the lead sinkers that have been lost by generationsof fishermen.

Alien Effects

As millions of us humans have taken to the skiesfor high-speed global travel, and as global trade hasramped up the quantities of goods moving across theseas in recent decades, a huge menagerie of otherspecies has followed—in our baggage, in our blood,on our shoes, and of course in the ballast water orshipping containers of our boats. Ranging frommicroorganisms to invasive plants and predatorysnakes, these hitchhiking organisms pose a range ofdangers to birds and other wildlife. Exotic species are

moving increasingly into habitats that have no natu-ral defenses against them. The movement is oftenaided by road-building or land-clearing projects thatopen up previously protected habitats. The invasionmay also be facilitated by global warming, whichshifts the natural range of many species.

Alien insects and plants already play a major partin changing bird habitats. In North America, forexample, hemlocks and firs are being attacked byAsian and European woolly adelgids, and have large-ly disappeared from parts of their natural range. Thedisappearance of the trees has led to declines in war-bler and other forest bird populations. Elsewhere inNorth America, a picturesque flower called purpleloosestrife has choked out native marsh vegetation.Meanwhile, vigorous Eurasian weeds such as crestedwheat grass, leafy spurge, and cheatgrass have trans-mogrified millions of acres of grassland and range—driving out sagebrush and other vegetation uponwhich many native species depend, and increasing thefrequency of wildfires.

Cats, mongooses, foxes, and other introducedpredators bring a different set of pressures, affectingat least a quarter of the world’s threatened bird


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Helmet vangaMadagascar’s vanishing evergreentropical forests harbor many endemicmammal, reptile, and bird species,including the helmet vanga. This blue-billed bird is disappearing with itshabitat, which is falling to timber cutters and subsistence farmers.

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species. For example, cats and foxes, originallybrought by well-meaning settlers from Europe, havedecimated many Australian birds, particularlyground-nesters like the malleefowl. A recent study insouthern Australia documented feral cats killingmembers of 186 of the country’s 750 species. Onsmaller Pacific islands, cats have proved even morevoracious, contributing to the extinctions of at leasteight bird species since 1800. One was the littleStephen’s Island wren (Traversia lyalli), a flightlessbird that lived nowhere else. Much of the island’s for-est was destroyed when a lighthouse was built therein 1894. The lighthouse keeper’s cat finished off theremaining birds shortly thereafter.

Similarly, sometime after World War II, browntree snakes from the Solomon Islands or New Guineaevidently hitched a ride to Guam on military air-planes. The invaders eventually wiped out endemicrails, flycatchers, and other wildlife. Biologists fearthey might do the same on the Hawaiian Islands,where a few of the snakes have turned up around air-ports. In Hawaii’s mountains, 28 species of uniquered, yellow, and orange native birds called honey-creepers have disappeared, and of the 21 or 22 thatsurvive, 18 more are threatened with extinction. In atrue case of paradise lost, the birds are plagued byintroduced avian pox and malaria, spread by compet-ing exotic birds and exotic mosquitoes. Mosquitoesfirst arrived aboard the whaling ship Wellington, in1826, and were probably dumped ashore by sailorsrinsing out water barrels. Only two species of honey-creepers show signs of developing resistance. Theothers, along with the vanishing Hawaiian crow, onlysurvive at higher altitudes, which the mosquitoes areslowly invading.

In other parts of the world, diseases now plagueeven some of the most adaptable birds. In just thepast four years, India’s once abundant long-billedand white-backed vulture populations have crashed,most likely from a virus. A decade ago, India’s vul-ture populations were booming around open dumpsand fields littered with rotting cow carcasses. Now,with vultures gone from many areas, feral dog, rat,and crow populations are exploding. As the microbemarches west into Pakistan, ornithologists fear thatAfrican and European vulture populations will soonbe affected, wiping out important scavenging birdsfrom the Serengeti to the Pyrenees.

The West Nile Virus’s North American arrival in1999 killed ten or eleven people, but also killed thou-sands of birds and put rare-bird breeding programs injeopardy. Subsequent spraying programs, aimed atkilling the mosquitoes that spread the sickness, alsowipe out a broad spectrum of insect life that manybirds depend upon to feed themselves and theiryoung. Most mosquito control districts use chemicalssuch as pyrethroids, which are not very directly toxic

to birds, but which are highly toxic to pollinatinginsects and most aquatic life, including many of thefrogs, fish, and dragonflies that birds need for food.

Hunting, Trapping, and Fishing

In many countries, poorly regulated hunting putsmillions of birds in the line of fire. Although publicawareness campaigns over the past decade havereduced the massacre to some degree, millions ofbirds are still indiscriminately shot in Malta, Greece,and parts of France and Italy, or are caught withsticky lime on Cyprus and in eastern Spain. Althoughfar less frequently than in decades past, eagles andhawks are still illegally shot in some parts of NorthAmerica.

In the tropics, as settled areas lose their wildlife,subsistence hunters and trappers move into more andmore remote areas:

• In southern Mexico, Central America, andSouth America, habitat loss and heavy hunting arepushing large turkey-like birds called guans andcurassows toward extinction.

• In South America, small songbirds called redsiskins and yellow cardinals have been captured tofeed the continent’s insatiable cagebird trade, and arenow at the brink of extinction.

• In New Guinea, mountain hunters target theblack sicklebill and birds of paradise, which are prizedboth for their showy feathers and as food.

• In equatorial Africa, after logging companiescut new roads into large tracts of remaining tropicalrainforest, bush meat market hunters systematicallywipe out the birds and other wildlife.

• In Brazil and elsewhere, illegal trapping of birdsfor the pet trade has made parrots one of the world’smost threatened bird families. And despite internation-al treaties limiting trade in wild birds, almost a third ofthe world’s 330 parrot species are threatened withextinction due to collecting as well as to habitat loss.

Even the high seas provide little haven for birdsthese days. After a 1991 international moratorium onthe use of drift nets, the huge nets that scoop up mas-sive quantities of sea birds and other animals alongwith fish, a new danger has emerged in the form oflong-line fishing. Dragged behind ships, long linescan be up to 80 miles long and studded with 12,000or more baited hooks. Albatrosses and petrels grabthe bait, get hooked, then drown as the lines sink.Some international measures have been taken—suchas night-time line setting—to reduce the fatalities ofthese long-lived but slowly reproducing birds. But alarge illegal industry continues to thrive. Off thecoast of Patagonia, for example, a pirate toothfishfishery threatens the ecology of Antarctic waters notonly by further reducing fish stocks but also bydrowning hundreds of thousands of seabirds. Some


albatross populations are very small and may soon goextinct. At the same time, growing numbers of intro-duced predators such as rats threaten many of theseseafaring birds when they make annual landfalls tonest on far-flung islands.

Modern Conveniences and Climate Change

Many of the conveniences that we generally takefor granted—better communication, brighter work-spaces, and ample electricity—come at a heavy cost tobirds. Many birds migrate at night, and many die

after mid-air collisions with the world’s growing for-est of television, radio, and cell-phone towers. Dur-ing just one cloudy night in January 1998, forexample, between 5,000 and 10,000 laplandlongspurs, sparrow-like birds that breed on tundrabut winter far south on farms in the United States,died after hitting one 420-foot-tall tower in Kansas.Between 1957 and 1994, 121,000 dead birds of 123species were counted beneath a single, 960-foot tele-vision tower in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Large day-flying birds, such as cranes, storks,eagles, and bustards, often hit electrical lines

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Long-tailed ground-rollerMultiple pressuresendanger the long-tailed ground-roller, a bird endemic to asmall patch of dry,thorny forest on Madagascar. Urban-ization sends growingnumbers of peopleinto its habitat to cutwood and hunt thebirds. Slash-and-burnagriculture, over-grazing, and intro-duced dogs and ratsalso threaten thisground-loving bird.


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obscured by fog. Many others are electrocuted whenthey touch wires while perching atop power poles.Glass-walled or large-windowed office buildings,which reflect the images of nearby trees, also confuseand knock out thousands of migrating birds.

To the dangers of man-made structures must nowbe added the dangers of human-caused global warm-ing, which is hastened by many of the same activitiesthat destroy habitat—forest clearing, forest fires, roadbuilding, and urban expansion. Over the past fewdecades, scientists have documented earlier flowerblooming, butterfly emergence, and frog calling—and earlier migration and egg-laying dates for Euro-pean and North American birds, from geese toswallows. Many bird species’ ranges are creepingnorthward. It’s not clear whether the various compo-nents of natural systems will shift in synchrony, butmany probably will not. Habitats may change tooquickly for many species to adapt. Park boundariesmay be rendered useless, and many localized speciesmay have no place to go.

Strategies for Saving Birds

In 1998, conservation biologists Russell A. Mit-termeier, Norman Myers, and Jorgen B. Thomsenwrote in the journal Conservation Biology: “If we areto have a real impact on biodiversity conservationworldwide, it is essential that we place great empha-sis on the biologically most important regionsregardless of their political or social situation and dowhatever possible to overcome social and politicaloptions.” Decades of field work, computer modeling,and analysis of satellite imagery had pinpointed “hotspots”—areas that harbor disproportionately highdiversity and high numbers of imperiled bird species.About 20,000 Important Bird Areas—the mostimportant bird breeding and migration spots—have

been identified around the world, as have 218Endemic Bird Areas—areas with the highest numbersof unique or endemic species. Taken together, thesetwo sets of areas harbor almost 70 percent of theworld’s threatened bird species. While not conferringformal protection, these designations offer a meansof establishing priorities for international, national,and local protection efforts.

We cannot improve the plight of birds—and bio-diversity—without simultaneously addressing theneeds of local people, wildlife, and the natural sys-tems upon which both people and wildlife depend.But that also means that failure to do what’s neces-sary to protect birds would be to endanger our ownfuture. Yet failure seems likely in many areas. Noth-ing nullifies conservation gains faster than warfare orthe ascension of corrupt leaders. In the 1970s, forexample, the north-central African nation of Chadhad one of the best park and game reserve systems inthe world. Then came 20 years of civil war and polit-ical turmoil, and Chad lost not only its park systembut much of its native wildlife. Similar losses occurredduring Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda. In theearly 1990s, Rwanda’s civil war forced officials toabandon the country’s parks, which were also one ofthe country’s most important sources of foreignincome. The war in Yugoslavia led to a similar devas-tation and abandonment of wildlife areas. In short,many progressive wildlife laws exist to protect birdsand other wildlife, yet go unenforced. And povertyoften renders it impossible for local people toembrace efforts to protect natural resources unlessthey clearly benefit in the bargain. Most countriesalso place economic advancement far ahead of envi-ronmental protections, yet the two interests are notmutually exclusive.

Over the past 20 years, the emergence of the mul-tidisciplinary field of conservation biology—a joining

of biology, conservation science, econom-ics, and social integration—changed thefocus of biodiversity preservation from apark to a landscape level, incorporating notjust protected areas but adjacent lands andwater sources. Today, landscape manage-ment increasingly places conservationalongside planning for human convenienceand economic gain. This approach is notonly progressive but pragmatic, since mostof the world’s remaining wild areas remainin private hands or under unprotected sta-tus. Marriages between agriculture andconservation interests, in particular, arebecoming more frequent and now include:

• The growing popularity of Centraland South American shade-grown coffee, acrop grown the traditional way, beneath atropical forest canopy that also shelters res-

The illustrations in this article, all of

endangered birds, were done by Tony

Disley of the United Kingdom. Disley

illustrated the field guides The Birds

of the Gambia and Senegal (Pica

Press), Birds of South East Asia

(New Holland Press), and Birds of

the Seychelles and Outlying

Islands (A&C Black, London). He was

awarded the Gold Medal for Botanical Illustration by

the Royal Horticultural Society in 1991. His website is

www.ram-internet.co.uk/tdisley/.


ident and migratory birds. Shade-grown coffee alsorequires far fewer chemical inputs than coffee grownon “modern,” pesticide-heavy “sun” farms. (SeeBrian Halweil’s article beginning on page 36 of thisissue.)

• Some successful incentive programs, such as theU.S. Conservation Reserve Program, which paysfarmers to periodically set aside land for wildlife aswell as soil conservation reasons. Many grasslandbirds get a boost from this program.

• A program set up by Dutch biologists thatoffers dairy farmers payments to protect and encour-age nesting birds as a farm product. The experiment,conducted between 1993 and 1996 and described inConservation Biology in 2001, found that it wascheaper to pay farmers to monitor and managebreeding wild birds as if they were a crop than tooffer compensation for keeping farm land out of pro-duction. The project resulted in increased breedingof lapwings, godwits, ruffs, and other meadow birds,while not interrupting the dairy business. By 1998,about 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) of Dutch farm-land were enrolled in this scheme.

• Conservation on rice farms. When the Califor-nia state government restricted rice growers fromburning their stubble in fall, rice farmers joined withconservationists to flood their fields and augmentavailable winter waterfowl habitat in the SacramentoValley, while helping their stubble biodegrade insteadof going up in smoke. From a pilot project in 1993,the program grew to embrace about 61,000 hectares(150,000 acres) by 1998.The valley is now animportant wintering areafor thousands of ducks,geese, ibis, herons, gulls,sandpipers, and otherwetland birds.

In my article “Flyinginto Trouble,” in the

January/February 1994 issue of this magazine, Inoted that Europe’s familiar, often rooftop-nestingwhite storks were in precipitous decline. Since then,many white stork populations have rebounded, bene-fiting from recent wet seasons on their drought-proneAfrican wintering grounds. The topsy-turvy fortunesof this spectacular species illustrate how completelybirds’ survival is intertwined with ours—a point Icould not forget last spring as I watched six of thesestately birds wade on bright red legs through DoñanaNational Park’s rippling shallows. My enjoyment ofwatching these striking creatures was muted by wor-ries about their future. Three years after the mine spilldrifted into Doñana, parts of the ecosystem remainhighly contaminated, and up to 2 percent of localwhite storks are born with visible deformities. Wouldheavy metal contamination keep the apparently robustbirds I watched from raising young? Might they strikepower lines one cloudy morning? Or will these birdssomeday spearhead a new colony in a town far to thenorth, where their kind has not been seen for decades?Through their fortunes or failures, storks and otherfeathered bellwethers will help us keep ourselves incheck, if we care to heed the warnings.

Former WORLD WATCH associate editor HowardYouth frequently writes on wildlife conservationissues.


Wattled CraneWhile wetland destruction is the primary threat to the wattled crane,poisoning, power line collisions, andhunting also take their toll on theseelegant African birds.

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Documents

The Plight of Birdsaviculturalsocietynsw.org/_PDFs/EP153B.pdf · greatly compromised. Birds pollinate crops, disperse seeds, control insects and rodents, and clean up carrion. For