Report Shows Need to Protect Bird Habitat While Fighting Climate Change

The National Audubon Society released the results of a seven-year study this week on the future of North American birds in a warming world, and that report is getting a lot of press. According to the report, of 588 species of birds studied, 314 are at risk of extinction due to climate change before the end of the century.

The study, based on data from Audubon's annual Christmas Bird Count and the North American Breeding Bird survey, found that 126 bird species are "climate-endangered": they're expected to lose more than 50 percent of their North American range by 2050 due to a warming climate. In other words, changing climate will make more than 50 percent of those birds' current range unsuitable for their survival. Another 188 "climate-threatened" bird species are projected to lose more than half their current range by 2080, though they may gain new potential range in areas formerly too cold or otherwise inhospitable.

The report underscores the dire future birds face if we don't act now to stem climate change. But it also highlights the main reason climate change threatens birds. A warming world means less habitat for many species of birds, which should give pause to those trying to excuse destruction of remaining habitat in order to combat climate change.

Here's a video explaining the study:

Audubon emphasizes the importance of protecting habitat as part of our response to climate change, and that continuing habitat destruction poses a threat even to those birds who may not be as sensitive to climate change itself. From the report's FAQ page:

Of California birds examined in the study, many stand to lose more than 90 percent of either their summer or winter ranges in North America by 2080, likely consigning them to extinction. Eared grebes are projected to lose 100 percent of their summer habitat, followed closely by merlins and the nearly ubiquitous California gulls at 98 percent.

The study isn't as accurate when it comes to loss of winter ranges: many migrating birds in North America winter in Mexico and Central America, which area wasn't covered in the study. Still, the black-headed grosbeak is expected to lose 100 percent of its winter range in the U.S., with the Bullock's oriole close behind at 95 percent.

We've developed a reputation here at KCET for covering the impacts of renewable energy development on wildlife. At times, readers will ask whether climate change doesn't mean that habitat would be lost anyway, so that we might as well use that soon-to-be-useless habitat to generate green energy and get off coal.

It's a reasonable question on the surface, but it largely falls apart when you consider an important fact: climate change may make habitat less suitable for wildlife by a range of degrees from "somewhat less useful" to "completely destroyed." If we use the chance that a parcel's habitat value will be lessened by climate change as a reason to pave the area with PV panels, or fill a mountain pass with huge turbines, or (as is happening in the southeastern U.S.) log our remaining forests for "carbon-neutral" fuel for power plants and pellet stoves, that habitat's value may be gone entirely.

In fact, ill-sited renewable energy development may actually make things significantly worse for some species. Consider our reporting on the issue of birds mistaking industrial solar facilities for bodies of water, with fatal injuries a common result. Fill an increasingly dry desert with solar plants, and birds likely to confuse those solar facilities for lakes will have an even worse time of it.

Or consider the golden eagle, one of the birds considered in Audubon's study. Expected to lose 79 percent of its summer range in North America by 2080, the eagle's reduced habitat 65 years from now offers a handy object lesson in how siting renewable energy facilities in the wrong place might actually be the last straw for some species.

Here's a screen shot from the Audubon study, showing the extent and quality of the golden eagle's winter range across the southwestern United States. The eagle's winter range is shown in blue, and the deeper the blue, the better that section of the range is for the eagle's survival.

And here's how Audubon expects the golden eagle's winter range to have changed by 2080:

Those readers steeped in the California renewable energy world will likely notice something troubling about the 2080 map right off the bat, but for the other 99 percent of us, let's add a visual aid:

That arrow points to one of the few remaining bits of even low-quality winter habitat for golden eagles expected to remain in the southern half of California in 2080, according to Audubon's projections.

The eastern edge of that remaining habitat is also a burgeoning center of wind power development.

As Southern California's golden eagles try to find suitable places to spend their winters over the next few warming decades, they will find themselves confronted by perhaps several thousand large wind turbines sidling up to one of the last stretches of marginally adequate wintering habitat.

The Audubon study suggests, in other words, that the wind industry's development corridor in the east Tehachapis and southern Sierra Nevada may well have been put in the worst possible place if Southern California is to have any golden eagles in 66 years.

Climate change may already be doing in Southern California eagles, along with other raptors. As the Orange County Register's Pat Brennan reports, the current drought seems to have sharply cut the supply of rodents and other prey for raptors from eagles to falcons, hawks, and owls.

It would be ironic if those last few golden eagles in SoCal, having barely survived the ravages of climate change, were done in by our attempts to address the problem.