Our birds are in trouble. Here’s how you can help.

“It is never too late to go quietly to our lakes, rivers, oceans, even our small streams, and say to the sea gulls, the great blue herons, the bald eagles, the salmon, that we are sorry.”

— Brenda Peterson, “Singing to the Sound: Visions of Nature, Animals and Spirit”

I spend a fair amount of my life’s discretionary time on Sitka trails, in Sitka National Historic Park or in my garden on Charles Street watching birds. I delight in the birds found in Sitka’s ecosystem. Varied thrush, trumpeter swans, chestnut-backed chickadees, dark-eyed juncos and belted kingfishers are some of my favorites. They are my winged brothers and sisters. They are, I believe, messengers from the divine — and they are in serious trouble.

My heart has been especially heavy these days when I consider the stress on birds. The fires raging in Australia, a result of our current climate crisis, have taken the lives of an estimated half-billion animals, many of them birds like Kangaroo Island’s glossy black cockatoo. The Audubon Society’s recent report on birds and climate, “Survival by Degrees: 389 Bird Species on the Brink,” indicates that 389 North American bird species — nearly two-thirds of those ­studied — are vulnerable to extinction due to climate change. Risks include increased wildfires, debilitating heat waves, heavy rains, red tide and sea-level rise. And, as they point out, there’s hope — “If we take aggressive action now, we can help 76% of vulnerable species have a better chance of survival.”

The Audubon report was on the heels of an in-depth assessment that appeared in the September 2019 online issue of Science — “Decline of the North American Avifauna.” In the past 50 years, we lost one in four birds across North America and Canada. That’s close to 3 billion breeding adult birds across all biomes! We lost 33% of boreal forest birds, 23% of Arctic tundra birds and 37% of shorebirds. This includes a loss of 1 in 3 dark-eyed juncos — one of my frequent companions. Cornell Lab of Ornithology conservation scientist Ken Rosenberg commented that “these bird losses are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife ... and that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment.”

So what’s a weary, yet cautiously hopeful bird lover to do? First and foremost, support comprehensive climate change policies. Solutions for economy-wide, deep de-carbonization, like U.S. House Resolution 763, “The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,” are great first steps. Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, recently said this at the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings, “A carbon price should be part of a comprehensive climate policy,” because it “would achieve large emissions reductions at a small cost.” As a result, “studies suggest roughly zero impacts on the overall growth of the U.S. economy.”

Then commit to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s seven simple actions to help birds:

1. Make windows safer, day and night.

2. Keep cats indoors.

3. Reduce lawns, plant native plants.

4. Avoid pesticides.

5. Drink coffee that’s good for birds.

6. Protect our planet from plastic.

7. Watch birds, share what you see as a citizen scientist.

Please join me in giving our winged neighbors a fighting chance at survival.

Lisa Sadleir-Hart is a bird lover and Citizens Climate Lobby Sitka Chapter volunteer.

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