We don’t know how many bird species we’ve lost. Here’s how you can help.
For the past 60 years, Chuck Otte has been watching birds, but tracking their decline has been difficult.
“In the past 35 years that I’ve lived here in Kansas, I’ve seen definite shifts in population,” said Otte, the secretary of the Kansas Bird Records Committee. “Climate change will cause the extinction of some species. Some we might see coming, but there will be surprises too.”
Alongside Eugene Young, coauthor of Birds of Kansas and chair of the Kansas Bird Records Committee, Otte is a part of a committee that evaluates and analyzes bird data each year for the Kansas Ornithological Society. The organization sponsors between 50 and 55 counts each year and publishes its results and analysis of population changes. Ornithology is the scientific study of birds.
“We’re the check and balances system to evaluate records,” Young said. “We also encourage the general public to be part of the scientific process documenting occurrences of birds around the state of Kansas so that we get a better grasp and understanding of the ornithological history.”
Without the necessary finances or volunteers to fund and run bird counts, Kansas is losing untold numbers of birds, and perhaps even entire bird species.
It’s harder to track which species are on the decline because the currently available data isn’t designed to answer these questions on a state scale, according to said William Busby, a zoologist with the University of Kansas’ Biological Survey and coauthor of the Kansas Breeding Bird Atlas.
“We need to have good data to make good decisions,” Otte said. “We don’t have good data, and we, too often, are not making good decisions. The research is so deficient.”
Additionally, COVID-19 forced cancellations of many of the state’s bird counts this year.
“We’re gonna miss a whole year’s worth of data, and that hasn’t happened since they started,” Otte said.
One of the researchers is pushing to redo the Kansas Breeding Bird Atlas, a definitive guide to Kansas birds that took six years of research and was published in 2001.
“It’s been 20 years since we did the last one,” Young said. “We’ll go back to the same plots, do the same survey protocol, and then we’ll have something to compare, contrast, and relate to climate change that has occurred in the last two decades.”
There are things that Kansans can do to help, the first being to volunteer for state and national bird counts like the Christmas Bird Count or the Breeding Bird Survey, and to join the Kansas Ornithological Society or local Audubon chapter. As technology advances, less experienced birders can identify species with specialized tools and apps, with much more ease than a traditional field guide.
“We need citizen science,” Otte said. “If you go back to the 19th century, the 18th century, a lot of the amazing discoveries weren’t by professional scientists. They were by citizen scientists. We’re just losing that. (There’s an attitude of) well, there are professionals that do that. No, there aren’t. We don’t have budgets that big, unfortunately.”
For those concerned about COVID-19 or limited mobility, there are other options like FeederWatch, a backyard bird counting effort.
“Doing things like participating in the Christmas Bird Count and FeederWatch opens a little window into what’s happening to the bird populations in your area,” said Emma Greig, a project leader for FeederWatch.”We wouldn’t know what was happening to birds at all if it weren’t for people doing citizen science.”
Greig also encouraged the practice of making a bird-friendly habitat in backyards and refraining from using pesticides.
“Leave your yard a little messy,” Greig said. “Have a brush pile. Put out a birdbath and give a water source. The less you do in your yard, the better because those plants will attract insects that will attract birds. It’s so simple, and so many people can do this.”
General green and conservation practices can also help the birds, such as wasting less, using fewer fossil fuels, planting native plants and eating locally grown food, according to Otte.
“It’s no one big thing that is the silver bullet, and we’re gonna do this, and it’s going to fix everything,” Otte said. “No. We got into this problem little bits at a time, and we’re going to have to get out of it by little changes at a time.”
This story was originally published September 8, 2020 at 2:14 PM.
