3 Billion Birds Gone
Land trusts can help curb declines
They give nature a voice through birdsong and add to the beauty of landscapes as they soar in the sky. They help to pollinate plants, disperse seeds and are bioindicators of ecosystem health. Birds connect us to the land, bring people together and give them joy. But now, birds need our help.
Research published in September 2019 by the journal Science shows that there is a net population loss of almost 3 billion birds across all bird species in the continental United States and Canada since 1970. This staggering revelation represents a 29% reduction in total breeding bird abundance, or a loss of more than a quarter of our birds over a single human lifespan. Common birds represent some of the greatest losses. Fifty years ago there were more than 260 million red-winged blackbirds, a bird that we associate with marshes, meadows, prairies and old fields. Today, we have lost an estimated 93 million red-winged blackbirds—a 37% population decrease in a half century, possibly echoing the decline and eventual extinction of the passenger pigeon. Ken Rosenberg, the study’s lead author, says, “We’re squeezing the planet so hard in terms of using resources and space, and now we’re reaching this tipping point.”
According to the authors, habitat loss is a driving factor in these widespread declines, particularly agricultural intensification and development. Forests alone have lost 1 billion birds, and grassland birds have declined by 53% since 1970. We know private lands matter when it comes to bird conservation, as roughly 60% of the land area in the United States is privately owned, including 911 million acres of farmland and another 400 million acres of private forests. Eighty-three percent of Eastern forests and over 80% of all grasslands in the United States are privately owned. According to an Enterprise op-ed written by David Moulton, a board member of the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Over 90% of the land in Maryland is in private hands, not public parks or wildlife refuges, so private landowners must be part of the solution.”
The Reach of Land Trusts
Land trusts have huge influence with landowners, given their role in private land conservation. According to the 2015 National Land Trust Census, land trusts have conserved more than 56 million acres, or twice the amount of land across all national parks within the lower 48 states. More than 4.6 million people actively provide financial support to these organizations. Land trusts are dedicated to public outreach to further their conservation mission. They successfully build one-on-one relationships with landowners in their communities and have powerful organizations in place, such as the Land Trust Alliance, to help educate partners, navigate public policy and lend support to their efforts each step of the way.
Land Trusts Helping Birds
Land trusts maintain stewardship responsibilities with the land and can be critical drivers of conservation success by focusing on priority birds within specific regions. For example, in Maine, the accredited Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust (CRCT) worked with the Somerset County Soil and Water Conservation District (SCSWCD) in 2017 to provide financial incentives to farmers to delay their mowing for hay and to make other sustainable birdfriendly land management changes, improving the opportunity for nesting success of bobolinks and other critical grassland birds. This experience led CRCT and SCSWCD to co-sponsor the Ag Allies program, ultimately funded by a Cornell Land Trust Small Grant, to target farmer assistance payments to land trust properties. Ag Allies worked with 18 land trusts in 2018, providing grassland habitat workshops, signage and both financial and technical assistance. This effort resulted in eight land trusts making management changes to benefit grassland birds as well as continued support for those already on a delayed mowing schedule to help with maintenance and enhancement of the quality of the habitat. Ultimately, CRCT added grassland bird management to its field lease agreements, protecting valuable and productive bird nesting habitat in perpetuity and eliminating the need for incentive funds.
In old-growth cottonwood habitats of Colorado, the accredited Central Colorado Conservancy (CCC) used citizen science and a charismatic bird species to build capacity through a volunteer base that is ultimately leading to critical riparian land protection and helping CCC better understand the conservation value of its service area. Staff tapped into existing public interest for birding and used eBird, a free and easily accessible data and monitoring tool, as well as informative flyers, to engage community members not already familiar with the bird community. CCC trained more than 70 volunteers interested in assisting with surveys to monitor for the Lewis’s woodpecker, a species of greatest conservation need in Colorado, in target areas across its easement and fee-owned holdings and beyond. The initial year of the Lewis’s Woodpecker Project resulted in 150 Lewis’s woodpecker sightings entered into eBird, 65 phone calls and emails from flyer advertisements (asking people to report sightings) and nearly 100 community participants in trainings and presentations highlighting the program.
For a land trust focused on land and water protection, gathering information and developing tools to help identify priority target areas for land conservation is key. CCC used the woodpecker project data to determine population centers of Lewis’s woodpecker activity and compared it with parcel ownership and land use, helping it pursue active protection of identified parcels. Andrew Mackie, CCC’s former executive director, says, “If you’re protecting riparian forests for birds, you are protecting land for fish, reptiles, amphibians, large game animals and for people, so it’s an overall win for everything we aspire to do at CCC.”
Two conservation projects are currently moving forward, thanks to nesting Lewis’s woodpecker populations on the properties. One is a 500-acre ranch in Chaffee County where the landowners became interested in conserving their ranch through the bird project and are now working with CCC to place a conservation easement on the property.
In Oregon and Washington, the accredited Center for Natural Lands Management (CNLM) currently leads a cooperative conservation collaborative called the Cascadia Prairie-Oak Partnership, which combines the partners’ expertise in land management, habitat restoration and rare species recovery. A 1,600-acre conservation easement in Oregon’s Willamette Valley protects actively grazed working lands encompassing some of the area’s most sizable and intact prairie habitat, and is home to the region’s largest known population of Oregon vesper sparrow, a species petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act.
“Done correctly, grazing replicates the natural disturbance process that historically created habitat conditions needed by vespers,” says Gary Slater, CNLM’s avian conservation program manager.
Utilizing the partnership’s established infrastructure and with participation by the landowner, CNLM is conducting habitat management and teaching conservation partners and private landowners about the plight of the sparrow. Activities include implementing a community outreach event to encourage participation in sparrow recovery and an on-site workshop to demonstrate the effective use of grazing as a management tool and strategy for land trust partners, land managers and practitioners. Monitoring will contribute to a time series of data instrumental in tracking changes in sparrow abundance and distribution to guide future management actions. “We want to attract and educate more private landowners to increase the amount of suitable habitat in the region for this rare grassland bird and its associate species,” says Elspeth Kim, CNLM’s cooperative conservation program manager. Results from this project will improve conservation outcomes for the sparrow and other vulnerable grassland bird species by increasing implementation and effectiveness of compatible habitat management practices.
As these examples show, by acquiring private lands and easements and then managing them in ways that protect and restore breeding and migratory bird habitat, land trusts can play a crucial role in the larger recovery effort of declining bird populations.
Seven Helpful Steps
Below are seven steps that land trusts can implement to help curb bird population losses:
STEP 1: Protect vital bird habitat by encouraging landowners to put conservation easements on their properties.
Prevent habitat loss on private land and stem bird declines by continuing to do what land trusts do best—asking willing landowners to voluntarily donate or sell conservation easements on their land and encouraging the local community to support these efforts with bird conservation in mind.
STEP 2: Utilize data from eBird to help prioritize land for conservation.
Use eBird status and trends data and maps to determine focal bird species occurrence, where to implement practices on the landscape and where property acquisitions and easements should be prioritized.
STEP 3: Create a preserve or conserve land within or adjoining Important Bird Areas (IBAs).
Use Audubon IBA locations to identify priority areas for conservation, inform acquisition planning and provide justification for an easement. IBAs can serve as a focal point for partnering with local or state Audubon chapters on land conservation projects.
STEP 4: Manage or restore habitat for declining birds on easement or fee-owned properties.
Sign up for a Farm Bill program, which provides financial incentives for land trusts, farmers, ranchers and forest owners to adopt ecosystem-friendly practices that can be beneficial to birds. These programs also provide matching funds to conservation partners, so land trust investments go further to protect land.
STEP 5: Become part of a collective effort, magnifying impacts at larger landscape scales through strategic partnerships.
Join networks of land trusts and/or practitioners to get involved in state- and regional-level planning efforts for birds and habitat. Help implement State Wildlife Action Plans and participate in land protection and management programs within Migratory Bird Joint Ventures.
STEP 6: Use information from the “Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone” story and the Science article to propel your land conservation mission.
Show successes and highlight important conservation work if you’re already working with birds, or consider incorporating birds into your outreach, stewardship campaigns and planning and acquisition strategies.
STEP 7: Disseminate the “Seven Simple Actions to Help Birds” to your membership base and easement landowners.
Help your land trust community understand its stewardship potential and the importance of protecting its own land, not only as vital habitat for birds, but also for other wildlife and general ecological health. Ask your members to be a part of the solution!
“The loss of nearly 3 billion birds signals a looming crisis that we have the power to stop,” says John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He points to a need for “bold, landscape-scale conservation campaigns.”
For more information about how land trusts can help birds, and birds can benefit land trusts, please visit the Cornell Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative. The initiative features land trust success stories, which serve as examples of how organizations have advanced the pace and impact of their protection and stewardship efforts through birds. Cornell’s land trust small grant program supports projects that facilitate bird conservation on private lands through activities such as strategic planning, outreach, habitat management, stewardship and capacity building.
Photo credit:
1. More than 45 million people observed birds around their homes and on trips, according to the “2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation” produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Birders and other wildlife watchers contributed $75.9 billion to the U.S. economy. / SUSAN SPEAR
2. Children participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count, a free, annual four-day event that engages bird-watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of bird populations, with sightings being reported online. / KATHY WALL