Photo: A Red-winged Blackbird greets the dawn with song, by Shari McCollough.
BY BRAD BUMGARDNER
If you’re reading this, odds are you care about birds. You watch them, listen to them, maybe even plan your weekends around them. I do. But if we want birds to be around for future generations, we’ve got to care about more than just what’s in our binoculars. We must care about both the science and the science programs that help keep them flying.
And that’s where the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) comes in.
Most folks think of USGS as the people who study rocks and earthquakes. What most people don’t realize is that they also play a massive role in migratory bird conservation—and have for decades. Back in the 1960s, the feds told the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to start doing real science on ducks. That work eventually expanded to all migratory birds and got handed off to USGS in the ’90s. Today, they lead some of the most important science used to manage bird populations across North America. For example, many birders have participated in the annual Breeding Bird Survey, another USGS product.
USGS scientists do it without an agenda. They don’t set hunting seasons. They don’t run refuges. They don’t lobby Congress. They gather the data. They build the models. They figure out what’s happening to birds, and why. These numbers, and their impact, don’t lie.
Since the 1970s, we’ve lost nearly three billion birds in North America. Ducks are down 31% in the last decade. Arctic geese are down 43%. That’s not a hiccup. That’s a long, slow freefall. Hardly noticeable, year to year, yet if you’ve been birding a few years, it starts to add up. You notice the numbers thinning: not as many, not as often.
Birds are showing us that something’s off, whether it’s habitat loss, changing migration patterns, climate pressures, or poor land use. USGS is the group turning that warning light into something decision-makers can use.
They support everything from hunting harvest models and disease tracking to the science behind when and where to mow the prairie. They run the Bird Banding Laboratory. They are the backbone partner for Project Owlnet, Chasing Melody, and every wildlife tracking program being coordinated in the United States. They work with both agencies and landowners, and they’ve got long-term datasets to back it all up.
So, why should Hoosier birders care? Because we sit right in the path of two major flyways. Because birds moving through Indiana are being shaped by habitat and policy decisions made hundreds of miles away. Because science-based management is the only way we keep bird numbers from falling off a cliff.
At Indiana Audubon, we rely on this science. Whether it’s bird banding at Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary or advocating for better land protection, we can’t do our part without good data from groups like USGS. You don’t need a PhD to help birds. Still, you should know where the science is coming from. Birds don’t follow borders, and the coordination and science must take place at the federal level, as these programs are critical for conserving our birds today and into the future.
If you care about birds, it’s time to speak up for the science that keeps them flying. Contact your representatives and urge them to support full funding for the U.S. Geological Survey’s bird programs. Visit www.congress.gov/members to find your Hoosier elected officials and let them know that bird conservation, grounded in science, matters to you.
Quite simply, in a world where birds are flying quieter each year, good science speaks volumes.
Tags: advocacy research
