Karen I. Shragg: Backyards without birds?

This spring, thousands of Americans took up a new hobby – birdwatching. It’s one of the fastest-growing pastimes. Over 45 million in the U.S. now consider themselves birders. And coronavirus have given people more opportunities to enjoy these beautiful creatures.

But unfortunately, even as the number of birdwatchers grows, the number of birds is plummeting. Over the past half-century, North America’s bird population has dropped by 3 billion – a 25 percent decline – largely due to the urban sprawl and habitat destruction caused by a surging human population.

And birds aren’t the only ones at risk. Thousands of species are facing endangerment or extinction due to our ravenous consumption of natural resources. If we want to preserve wildlife and wild places for ourselves and future generations, we’ll need to check the unsustainable growth of our own population.

I’ve been a birder ever since I got my first Golden Guide to birdwatching in the 10th grade. And I ran a nature center for much of my adult life. So I’ve witnessed the precipitous decline of bird populations firsthand.

At the nature center I used to run, we did everything possible to create and preserve bird habitat. We planted native tree species and got rid of many invasive ones. We even broke up an old parking lot and transformed it into a forest full of native vegetation. That did help the resident chickadees, cardinals, and goldfinches, since they didn’t have to endure the perils of migrating to disappearing habitats elsewhere.

But despite our best efforts, overall bird populations still declined. As we lost all of our diving ducks, and many of our migratory warblers, I tried to figure out what was going on. A nearby marsh filled over time, as marshes do, so that explained the loss of yellow-headed blackbirds and the diving ducks. But even deep marshes were experiencing a similar loss of species.

The real culprit wasn’t natural habitat changes – it was the rapid growth of our own human population. We are apex predators and combined with our modern lifestyle we take up a lot of room where birds would otherwise live.

America’s surging population is the albatross around environmentalists’ necks, pun intended. Due to bird banding programs and satellite tracking, we know that bird populations have shrunk by a quarter since 1970, when the first Earth Day was held. During that same time, our own population jumped 60 percent, from about 205 million to 330 million. And that figure continues to grow by 1.5 million each year, mainly due to immigration.

And make no mistake – human population growth is directly wiping out birds. Although rarely blamed, from 1982 to 2010, America lost over 41 million acres of forests, prairies, cropland, and other wildlife habit due to urban sprawl. That’s an area larger than the entire state of Georgia. This lost habitat means birds and other animals have fewer places to nest and eat.

And sprawl isn’t the only negative consequence of growth. As the U.S. population has ballooned, so has our consumption of fossil fuels. Since the early 1980s, total U.S. carbon emissions have increased from about 4.4 trillion metric tons annually to roughly 5.1 trillion metric tons now. That’s a 16 percent overall increase, despite emissions per capita falling thanks to more energy-efficient vehicles, light bulbs, and buildings. Those emissions destabilize our climate and throw off the timing of the insect and flower cycles which need to coincide with bird migrations.

Scientists warn that one out of every three plant and animal species could go extinct by 2070 if climate change progresses.

Simply put, our population growth isn’t sustainable. The Global Footprint Network estimates that a U.S. population of 150 million would be needed to sustain a human population with water and other resources. Reverting to this more sustainable level would take decades. And while total fertility rate is going down in the U.S., our immigration policies keep us growing. It is only possible for birders to enjoy a future with a stable amount of birds, if we start to make the connection between human numbers and wildlife. If our numbers go up, their numbers go down. We must continue to collectively choose to have smaller families and humanely scale back immigration – which will account for roughly 90 percent of future population growth if current trends continue.

As an avid birder, I’m glad to see so many people taking a newfound interest in these amazing descendants of dinosaurs. But I fear that if we don’t confront our own unsustainable growth, there soon won’t be many birds left to watch.

Karen I. Shragg is an author and environmental consultant.