EP 335 Birds Are Vanishing From North America

Backyard birdwatchers, you’re eyes aren’t deceiving you. The number of birds in the United States and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since 1970. The head of the National Audubon Society, calls it a ‘full blown crisis’. Birds are the most studied group of animals on Earth given the ease by which they can be found and the many who make that their hobby. The sad story in the skies above is how many fewer of the species that give us such joy are there to be found. So how did this happen and what can we do about it? For answers we turn to Kenneth Rosenberg, perhaps America’s greatest authority on bird populations. He’s a professor at Cornell University’s celebrated program on ornithology and the author of the definitive study on the losses. This work published in the journal ‘Science’ is a product of Cornell and the American Bird Conservancy. More than 90 percent of the losses(2.5 billion birds)come from just 12 families including sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, larks and finches. The most disheartening part of this picture is occurring in our forests and grasslands. Habitat degredation is key to all of this. You will come away from this podcast understanding the problem and what we can do to reverse this trend. There is hope, but to restore these lovely sights and sounds, we must take action.

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