A new report shows troubling trends for birds. The latest “State of the Birds” report, the first released since 2022, finds about one-third of species, including many in the Mountain West, are at high or moderate concern from a conservation perspective.
The results are not a surprise to bird experts. A landmark study five years ago revealed that North America had lost 3 billion birds since 1970, including many common species. Brandt Ryder, chief conservation scientist at the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, said this new data shows that species continue to decline, some at accelerating rates.
“It's something we need to pay attention to because birds are an indicator of environmental health,” said Ryder, who contributed to the section of the report on grassland birds.
Grasslands in the Midwest and Mountain West, and arid landscapes in the Mountain West, are the country’s biomes that have seen the biggest hits in the past 50 years, losing 43% and 41% of bird populations, respectively.
Species declines in both regions are tied to habitat loss, the report said. Grasslands have been converted to crop fields, and arid lands, encompassing the sagebrush steppe, suffer from drought and wildfires. Western forest birds, once seeing more moderate declines, now face increasingly dire outlooks due to habitat degradation from fire suppression.
The report also highlighted “tipping point” species that have lost more than half of their population in the last 50 years and require "focused scientific research" to identify drivers of their decline, authors wrote.
In the Mountain West, mountain plovers, lesser and greater prairie-chickens and greater sage-grouse are among the birds in the most urgent category of tipping point species with "perilously"low numbers.
However, the report also shared a positive note. Around 1 in 3 American adults now participate in bird-watching, an activity that generates interest in conservation and contributes more than $100 billion in travel and equipment spending.
“Public interest in birds and the economic benefits from birding are at unprecedented levels, as is the information available about the status of each and every one of our bird species,” said Jeff Walters, the conservation committee co-chair at the American Ornithological Society, in a press release for the report.
Ryder also sees hope in new collaborations that organizations like his are forging with farmers and ranchers. That includes the Central Grasslands Roadmap Initiative, which started in 2018 to share and implement science-based conservation practices aimed at helping grassland species and ranchers who depend on the land for their livelihoods. The idea, he said, is that what's good for the land is also good for birds.
“I think you are seeing this broad partnership in a way that you maybe weren't seeing in the past,” he said. “That is a paradigm shift in terms of the way we think about and the way we do conservation.”
However, recent cuts to the federal workforce and uncertainty around federal funding could jeopardize this progress, Ryder said.
"It was already challenging to try to address and mitigate threats for the suites of species, but now, all of a sudden, you're trying to do that with less resources," he said.
Some conservation projects drew funding from the Inflation Reduction Act or relied upon support from federal National Resources Conservation Service offices.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
