Not-So-Common Birds
How You Can Help Preserve Native Bird Species
Tips for protecting common North American birds, many of which have lost their habitats to farms, development and irresponsible logging practices.
We're all used to hearing news about how our modern lifestyles are causing harm to endangered species and fragile, faraway environments like the Amazon rainforest or the glaciers of Greenland. But it turns out that suburban sprawl, irresponsible logging practices, industrial agriculture and global warming are exacting a cost to the nature in our own backyards as well.
A recent analysis by the National Audubon Society found that 20 species of common North American birds have suffered drastic population declines over the past 40 years. These birds include the northern bobwhite (down 82 percent), the eastern meadowlark (down 71 percent), common terns (down 70 percent), whippoorwills (down 57 percent) and little blue herons (down 54 percent). Farming, development and other factors that cause a direct loss of habitat are to blame for most of the declines, according to the society, but climate change is also creating a growing threat.
So what can a green-minded bird-lover do to help? The Audubon Society offers several suggestions:
- Join your local chapter of the Audubon Society to offer your support to local conservation programs. Working at the local level is often the best way to achieve meaningful and rewarding results, and you'll meet other like-minded people as well.
- Keep alert to changes in the U.S. Farm Bill (which is up for renewal this year) and the Conservation Reserve Program, and don't be shy about expressing your views to your elected representatives, whether by email, phone, fax or letter (or at the ballot box).
- Make sure your state, provincial and federal legislators promote programs for sustainable forest management and against environmentally damaging logging, mining or drilling practices.
- Fight for wetland conservation programs (you can learn more from the Audubon Society here).
- Join the growing movement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming. That means not only supporting businesses and organizations that are taking action against climate change, but making your own lifestyle as environmentally friendly as well: walking or biking instead of driving, when possible; adjusting your thermostat at home; investing in solar or green energy; composting; using compact fluorescent light-bulbs, and so on.
- Encourage your elected representatives to take seriously the threats to native wildlife caused by invasive species. Animals and plants that are not native to a particular habitat can overrun local species that birds depend on for food, or can pose a direct threat to birds by predation.
By all doing our part to preserve our native birds' habitats, we can help ensure that our children and grandchildren will grow up still able to enjoy, firsthand, the calls of bobwhites and whippoorwills in their backyards.
