Half of the North America’s Birds at Risk due to Climate Change

A lot of animals, birds, fish, and plants will have to displace to keep up their current climate conditions, as global warming progresses. Several species will be able to acclimatize well. Some will struggle. Yet others might just die off.

Recently, The National Audubon Society has published the report regarding “How America’s bird will react to anticipated climate changes”. As per the report of the Audubon Society, there are almost half of all 588 species in North America together with the bald Eagle, which is a national symbol, are facing hefty climate shifts that eventually could cut their haunt and becomes the source of harsh population turn down of 314 species till 2080, as if the climate changes with the same pace.

The Audubon Bird Study seems to be the most fortunate and comprehensive study as it used more than 30 years of North American Climate data. They used global-warming projections in order to get an estimate for where those birds were likely to move as the world warms thinking that the birds needed to keep up their present climatic conditions. They also gathered the report from the American Breeding Bird Survey and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, and also get the climate projections from a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If you talk about the Common Loon, it presently breeds throughout Canada and parts of the northern United States during the summer. It prefers large lake areas in order to catch fish and then makes its way behind both US coasts during the winter. Since the earth gets hotter, the bird is possibly to drop roughly 56 % of its preferred breeding range. Once-frequent loon sightings in Minnesota may be a thing of the past till 2080.

Michelle Nijhuis in Audubon states that “Suitable breeding grounds for the Baird’s Sparrow could disappear entirely, and the Piping Plover, an icon of the Atlantic Flyway, may vanish from many eastern shores.”

According to another striking finding; as many as nine states may see their state birds vanish from within their borders in the coming century, thanks to this habitat shift.

A chief scientist, Gary Langham, led the team of Audubon bird study ornithologists. They scrutinized more than 500 bird species at a time. Researchers have developed various scenarios of birds’ geographic distribution during breeding and non-breeding seasons. With the help of these scenarios, they marked 126 of the species as “climate endangered” as their entire haunts/habitats will change in about 65 years. These researchers also mark the birds with less threat and they have the chances to expand their habitat. These birds are American Robin, crow and blue jay.

The Audubon Bird Study also displays the interactive colored maps for most of the species. You can filter the maps either by species or state or province. For instance, the map color is darker for specific species; it means that the condition for survival is more favorable for that specie. Moreover, the outlined areas represent the current range for each season.