2006

14 November 2006. Climate Change Pushing Bird Species to Oblivion. Excerpt: NAIROBI, Kenya, Environment News Service (ENS) - Birds are suffering the escalating effects of climate change in every part of the planet, finds a new report released today by the global conservation group [World Wildlife Fund] WWF at the United Nations climate change conference in Nairobi. The report reveals a trend towards a major bird extinction due to global warming. The researchers found declines of up to 90 percent in some bird populations, as well as total and unprecedented reproductive failure in others. They estimate that bird extinction rates could be as high as 38 percent in Europe, and 72 percent in northeastern Australia, if global warming exceeds two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels - currently it is 0.8¼C above those levels. "Robust scientific evidence shows that climate change is now affecting birds' behavior," said Dr. Karl Mallon, scientific director at Climate Risk Pty. Ltd of Sydney, Australia, authors of the report. ..."We are seeing migratory birds failing to migrate, and climate change pushing increasing numbers of birds out of synchrony with key elements of their ecosystems," Mallon said. The report, "Bird Species and Climate Change: The Global Status Report," reviews more than 200 scientific articles on birds in every continent to build up a global picture of climate change impacts. "Birds have long been used as indicators of environmental change, and with this report we see they are the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' when it comes to climate change," said Hans Verolme, director of WWF's Global Climate Change Program. The report identifies groups of birds at high risk from climate change - migratory, mountain, island, and wetland birds, Arctic and Antarctic birds, and seabirds. ...Download the full report, "Bird Species and Climate Change: The Global Status Report" [75 pages], or a summary at: http://www.panda.org/climate/birds

29 August 2006. Trying to Export the Success of a Maine Seabird Program. The New York Times. EASTERN EGG ROCK, Me. - On a summer day, this treeless seven-acre island at the seaward edge of Muscongus Bay attracts visitors from around the world. The arctic terns screeching overhead wintered in Antarctica, the puffins flying in out of the fog with herring stacked crosswise in their colorful bills came here to nest from waters well offshore, and the seabird biologist Lei Cao traveled more than 6,000 miles from China to work and learn here. In the last few years, biologists from developing countries have joined the seabirds that summer on Maine's islands to learn the techniques that Project Puffin of the National Audubon Society has used to bring seabirds back to Maine. ...The colony that is the focus of her research here has an estimated 35,500 breeding pairs of these tree-nesting, diving seabirds. In 2005, Dr. Cao also helped organize a survey of water birds along the lower Yangtze River floodplain, from Three Gorges Dam to Shanghai, important wintering grounds for more than a half-million swans, ducks and geese. ...Stephen W. Kress began an experiment that has brought back puffins and terns to this and other Maine islands. He said his work was based on restoring the nesting habitat and controlling predators, especially the large gulls that had taken over since other seabirds were hunted out 100 years earlier. His team relocated puffin chicks from thriving colonies in Newfoundland to specially constructed burrows here and fed them by hand. They used decoys and recorded calls to lure puffins and terns to the nesting grounds. And they staffed the island each breeding season to ensure that the large gulls, which do not like to nest around people, would not return.
Eastern Egg Rock now has 70 pairs of breeding puffins. ...Imperiled seabirds worldwide have benefited from the restoration techniques pioneered in Maine, Dr. Kress said. Biologists have used decoys to establish new breeding grounds for the critically endangered short-tailed albatross on the Japanese island of Torishima (the primary colony there is threatened by eruptions from an active volcano) and have used recorded calls to encourage cahows (Bermuda petrels) to nest on higher ground as their nesting islands disintegrate. ...Jo Hiscock, who spent the summers of 2004 and 2005 with Project Puffin, is working for the New Zealand Department of Conservation protecting Chatham Island taiko petrels from predators; once thought to be extinct, fewer than 150 of the birds remain....

2005

3 May 2005. Found in Arkansas: Hope on Wings. By JAMES GORMAN. NY Times. ...On Thursday, the day that scientists announced the first confirmed sighting of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, I went for a short paddle in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, where the bird was seen. I was with four other people, two from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which had made a major effort to confirm the sighting, and two from the Nature Conservancy, which has been buying land in the area. ...The common wisdom had been that the ivory bill was gone for good, not a bird anymore but a symbol, a reminder of loss. It once lived in southern swamps and bottom land and depended on large areas of old forest, since it needed dead trees for nesting and for feeding on grubs and beetles beneath the bark. Logging squeezed out the ivory bill, turning it into an accusatory ghost. ...It was the biggest of its kind, something Americans always love. It had a 30-inch wingspan and a jackhammer beak. Audubon called it the "great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe" and others called it the Lord God bird because when people saw it, they said, "Lord God!" But it was gone, one of the natural treasures that a growing country stepped on and broke. ...Tim Gallagher, who wrote "The Grail Bird" about the search and the sighting of the ivory bill, said that Bobby Harrison, his partner on the search, wept when he saw the bird fly in front of his canoe. I know of at least one person with no connection to the search who wept on reading the news, and I'm sure he was not alone. Why was the discovery so powerful? I think it is the reason for the bird's survival. It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't luck. And it wasn't simply the resilience of nature, although that helped. The reason for the astonishing re-emergence of a mysterious bird is as mundane as can be. It is habitat preservation, achieved by hard, tedious work, like lobbying, legislating and fund-raising. ...Think about where the bird was found, in a national wildlife refuge, and in an area, the Big Woods of Arkansas, that conservation organizations and government agencies had targeted as crucial for preservation. Just south of the Cache River refuge is the White River National Wildlife Refuge. State refuges are nearby. And the Nature Conservancy has been buying up land in that area. ...I think the reason the discovery is so moving is that so many people worked so hard to save and protect land, telling themselves there may be an ivory bill out there, and that protecting the bottomland had to be important. I'm not sure they all believed it, but they acted as if they did. ...It is possible that this is the last ivory bill, that it won't appear again. See also information at the Nature Conservancy.
http://nature.org/ivorybill/

For Falcons as for People, Life in the Big City Has Its Risks as Well as Its Rewards - By Melissa Sanford. As falcons teach their fledglings to fly in Temple Square, the most popular tourist site in Salt Lake City, a cadre of human volunteers act as a safety net.

 

2004

May 2004. Altamont Pass is the most lethal wind farm in N. America for raptors. Wind turbines at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) kill more birds of prey than any other wind facility in North America.

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