FEATURE
Gains and losses across the North American avifauna over the last half century. Source: K. V. Rosenberg et al., Science 10.1126/science.aaw1313 (2019).
Devastation in the Skies Confirming a huge decline in bird populations over the past five decades, scientists say much needs to be done, and quickly, to avert even greater losses. But they also say birds are resilient and can rebound, given the right conditions. BY CHRIS ROSE
W
hen Adam Smith first saw the results of a massive study on declining bird populations in the U.S. and Canada, he was sure he had made some sort of terrible mistake. He simply could not believe what his computer was showing: a drop of three billion breeding birds since 1970, three billion of the estimated total 10 billion birds throughout the U.S. and Canada. But after checking various factors, it became clear there was no error, said Smith, senior biostatistician for Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada.
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WINGSPAN FALL/WINTER 2019
Smith was one of the co-authors of the alarming study published Sept. 19, 2019 in the respected journal Science, which revealed the populations of 529 bird species in the U.S. and Canada dropped 29 percent between 1970 and 2018. “I was the analytical computational work horse,” Smith told the Wild Bird Trust in an interview from Ottawa. “The three-billion [bird decline] figure was generated on my computer.” “My initial reaction was one of shock and perhaps despair,” he said. “I think it’s striking that there has been this extreme change…across an entire continent in less than the span of a human lifetime.”
