Nearly two-thirds of North American bird species are threatened by extinction—losing more than 50% of their range by 2080—according to the National Audubon Society's new report, Survival by Degrees.
“This isn’t just about birds, it’s about the ecosystem we share with them. Birds have always been the indicators of the health of nature. They personalize and localize climate change,” said David Yarnold, President and CEO of the National Audubon Society.
The report is the first comprehensive study that overlays bird distribution with nine climate threats by region, in order to get a more detailed sense of how birds will be impacted in the years to come. Some regions have up to five combined climate threats including drought, false spring, fires, urbanization, spring heat waves, heavy rain, lake level rise, cropland expansion, and sea level rise.
A new online tool created by Audubon allows people to enter their zip code and see exactly which birds in their area will be affected according to different climate scenarios. If the global temperature doesn’t increase above 1.5 °C, then three-fourths of the vulnerable birds could stand a chance of being saved. But without a reduction in carbon emissions, the current path to the scenario of increasing the global temperature by 3°C will have drastic effects on birds and their habitats.
For NYC, urbanization and sea level rise are the biggest factors contributing to loss and threat of state birds, particularly Coastal Birds like the Piping Plover and Saltmarsh Sparrow.
The Piping Plover, a federally listed endangered species in the NYC area. The beach and marshland habitat of the Piping Plover is shared by other shorebirds being washed out by rising sea level.
“Where are they [shorebirds] going to go in the New York City area or Long Island? It's so heavily developed, there's no place for their habitat to actually move,” explained Jillian Liner, Director of Conservation for Audubon New York. “Coastal systems are really dynamic, they've evolved with storm events, sand shifts and it moves,” Liner continued. “But we have very few places in New York where that is allowed to happen just because of development, we try to lock the coastal system in place.”
Yet Liner holds some optimism. “My thinking as a conservationist is it represents a habitat that provides services more than just to an individual bird, salt marshes are known to serve as a natural barrier to storms and flooding. But in addition, you never know how species are going to adapt. So if we give that population the best chance that they can to adapt, who knows? It it might be able to and continue to persist even in the face of sea level rise.”
Another group of birds under threat in New York are Boreal Forest Birds. Many of these birds have habitats in higher altitudes of the Catskills and Adirondack Mountains. “It has a very limited range, it's only found in the Northeast,” Liner said referring to the forest species Bicknell's Thrush. “It's very possible that their habitat will disappear from New York.”
The Bicknell’s Thrush found in high altitudes of the Catskills and Adirondacks.
The release of the Audubon report follows another recent historical report by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which found 3 billion birds have disappeared since 1970. The focus of the Cornell study was the reduction of common birds across the country—birds we take for granted like sparrows, blackbirds, and warblers. “All those warblers that come through Central Park in the spring, as a group they've lost hundreds of millions of individuals from their populations,” said Ken Rosenberg, Applied Conservation Scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy.
“We knew that some bird populations were declining, we knew others were increasing but we had never really looked at the numbers to see whether they're actually fewer birds today than there were 50 years ago, or whether the birds were just shifting,” said Rosenberg in explaining the origins of the study. “We were pretty shocked to see this net loss across all species.”
Here are all the New York birds that are most vulnerable to climate change, organized by summer range loss (the range where birds breed each year):
All the birds.
While it will take policy changes to reduce carbon emissions, there are some things that can be done on the individual level. “Make your yard or, if you live in the city, the nearest park, bird-friendly. Planting native and other plants that provide habitat and food sources to birds,” suggested Liner.
Rosenberg added, “We suggest ways that people can magnify actions by bringing it to their communities and ultimately demanding policy changes that could make a bigger difference for bird populations.”
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology also lists other ways to help, like making windows safer, keeping pet cats indoors, avoiding pesticides, drinking shade-grown coffee, reducing plastic consumption, and getting involved by birdwatching to contribute to crowdsourced data.
Hear reporter Clarisa Diaz talk about the Audubon study on WNYC's Morning Edition:
Clarisa Diaz is a designer and reporter for Gothamist / WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter @Clarii_D.
This article has been updated to clarify The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's guidance on how to help birds.
