[va-richmond-general] interesting article in the Washington Post today - link has some photos, too

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR2009031902
055_pf.html

 

Several U.S. Bird Populations Plummet Due to Habitat Loss
Sweeping Report Shows Some Species Have Made Gains

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 19, 2009; 2:30 PM 

Several major bird populations have plummeted over the past four decades
across the United States as development transformed the nation's landscape,
according to a comprehensive survey released today by the Interior
Department and outside experts, but conservation efforts have managed to
stave off potential extinctions of others. 

"The State of the Birds" report, a sweeping analysis of data compiled
through scientific and citizen surveys over the past 40 years, shows that
some species have made significant gains even as others have suffered.
Hunted waterfowl and iconic species such as the bald eagle have expanded in
number, the report found, as birds along the nation's coasts and in its arid
areas and grasslands have declined sharply. 

"Just as they were when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring nearly 50
years ago, birds today are a bellwether of the health of land, water and
ecosystems," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. "From
shorebirds in New England to warblers in Michigan to songbirds in Hawaii, we
are seeing disturbing downward population trends that should set off
environmental alarm bells." 

The fact that concerted conservation efforts have saved birds such as the
peregrine falcon and allowed various wetland birds to flourish, scientists
said, shows that other species can reverse their declines with sufficient
support from federal agencies and private groups. 

"When we try, we can do it," said John Fitzpatrick, executive director of
the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. "There are now populations and
habitats across the country begging for us to do it." 

The species in decline are being affected by climate change, habitat
destruction, invasive species and disease, among other factors, the report
found. More pedestrian threats, such as collisions with buildings and
attacks by feral cats, have diminished birds' numbers in some urban and
suburban areas. 

Hawaii, more than any other place in the country, highlights the challenge
native American birds face. Seventy-one bird species have disappeared since
humans populated the Hawaiian islands in 300 A.D., and another 10 have not
been spotted in years. At the moment, more than a third of the bird species
listed under the Endangered Species Act are in Hawaii, but state and federal
agencies spent only $30.6 million on endangered birds there between 1996 and
2004, compared with more than $722 million on the mainland. 

"In Hawaii we've got lots of imminent extinctions, but not enough resources
being spent on them," said George Wallace, vice president of the American
Bird Conservancy. 

With sufficient funds, Wallace argued, federal managers could restore
Hawaiian birds' habitat and protect them against introduced species such as
pigs, sheep and deer that threaten their survival. He estimated it would
cost roughly $15 million to erect extensive fencing for the Palila, a
Hawaiian honeycreeper whose numbers declined from 6,600 birds in 2003 to
2,200 in 2008. 

Bird advocates have enjoyed more success in raising money to protect North
American waterfowl, which have a powerful political constituency among sport
hunters. The U.S. government has raised $700 million for wetlands
conservation through the sale of Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and
Conservation Stamps, better known as "duck stamps," and a coalition of
private groups and agencies in Canada, the United States and Mexico
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/mexico.html?nav=el>
have raised more than $3 billion over the past 20 years to protect more than
13 million acres of waterfowl habitat. Taken as a whole, the 39 species of
hunted waterfowl that federal managers track have increased 100 percent over
the past 40 years. 

In some cases, however, public and private protections for key bird species
are in jeopardy. The Conservation Reserve Program provides federal dollars
to farmers in order to preserve vital habitat on which species such as the
lesser prairie chicken depend, but contracts encompassing 3.9 million acres
are set to expire by the end of September. Michael J. Bean, who directs the
wildlife program for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said
losing these grasslands "could be the tipping point that makes an endangered
species designation for the lesser prairie chicken unavoidable." 

Placing the bird on the endangered species list, Bean added, could make it
more difficult for entrepreneurs to build wind projects in the southern
Plains. As a whole, birds that breed only in grasslands have declined by 40
percent over the past four decades. 

Elsewhere in the country, conservationists are trying to protect rare bird
species before disease can strike. On Santa Cruz Island, off California's
southern coast, part of the Channel Island chain, Nature Conservancy
officials are conducting a vaccination campaign aimed at protecting the
Island Scrub-Jay from the West Nile virus, which has already hurt some
related bird species on the mainland. 

Scott Morrison, the conservancy's director of conservation science in
California, said his group has determined the virus has yet to infect the
island's unique, bright blue birds even as incidence of West Nile among
birds in nearby Ventura County nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008. While
the scrub-jay's remote location offers them some protection, vaccination
offers even more. 

"There's evidence, anecdotal, this [vaccination] could actually be a useful
strategy to guard against this disease," Morrison said, noting that
scientists had already vaccinated California condors against the virus. "If
it comes over tomorrow, maybe we would avoid some of these scary drops in
numbers, for at least a subset in population."

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