Of a Feather: How safe passage has been assured

By BILL CHAISSON
By Bill Chaisson

Fall migration has begun. Many birds have disappeared from backyards already. I haven’t seen my neighborhood orioles in weeks. Although the level of nectar in my hummingbird feeder continues to decline, I have not seen them drinking; they must come only during the warm middle of the day, when I am at work. They are due to depart in the next week or so.

The New Hampshire Birds online forum is alive with reports of migrating waterfowl, shorebirds. and passerines. Occasionally someone will remark, showing their age, that there are not as many of some species as there used to be. In these columns I regularly cite data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey, which has kept track of population sizes since 1966. Numbers for many bird species have been declining.

It was common in the 1980s to blame declines on habitat loss at the wintering grounds of migratory species. Deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean was and is a fact. Human population growth there has led to expansion of the acreage devoted to subsistence farming. In addition, the appetite of consumers in the developed world for produce, meat, and lumber from Central and South America has caused further deforestation.

But in the 21st century there has been a growing realization that migratory bird species face challenges on their breeding grounds and along the temperate-zone routes to their winter homes. Suburban sprawl has decreased the amount of suitable habitat for species with more narrow niches, like many warblers and sparrows, while benefiting species with broader niches, like robins, blue jays, cardinals, and catbirds. In addition to loss of habitat, many North American birds are losing their food sources as the number of insects decline in the face of growing use of pesticides that kill them outright and herbicides that in turn deprive insects of a meal.

The time is ripe, then, for legislation to address declines in bird population numbers, which are, to bend a metaphor back on itself, a canary in the coal mine. We have been in this situation before and North Americans have rallied to reverse the trend. In the late 19th century, conservation as a profession and as a forum of advocacy among the well-to-do, marshaled the necessary scientific evidence which was then forcefully presented to lawmakers, who eventually responded by negotiating international treaties and creating federal laws.

Throughout the 19th century in the U.S. it was normal to eat wild birds. We are not talking about what we think of as game birds now. No, from the first European settlement into the early 20th century, we ate everything. The following is from an essay by Paul Ehrlich (of “population bomb” fame):

Reading his classic “Birds of America,” published in the early 1840s, one is quickly impressed with the number of species with which John James Audubon had firsthand experience. His numerous comments on hunting and eating eggs and adults applied not just to game birds such as ducks, geese, and prairie chickens, but also to others such as Dunlin (“. . . my party shot a great number of them, on account of the fatness and juiciness of their flesh”), Eskimo Curlew, Belted Kingfisher (“. . . the eggs are fine eating”), American Robin (every gunner brings them home by bagsful, and the markets are supplied with them at a very cheap rate”), and Dark-eyed junco (“. . . flesh is extremely delicate and juicy”). He reported some 48,000 Golden Plovers slaughtered by French gunners near New Orleans in a single day.

The first U.S. legislation to protect birds, the Lacey Act of 1900, made it “unlawful to import, export, sell, acquire, or purchase fish, wildlife or plants that are taken, possessed, transported, or sold: 1) in violation of U.S. or Indian law, or 2) in interstate or foreign commerce involving any fish, wildlife, or plants taken possessed or sold in violation of State or foreign law.” Seventy-five years later, the Lacey Act was invoked to protect animals listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The act was amended in 2008 to cover a wider variety of plants.

In 1916, the United States and Great Britain signed the Migratory Bird Treaty. (Why Great Britain? Because Canada was not yet an entirely independent country and did not conduct its own international relations.) Two years later the U.S. Congress passed the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).

The treaty designated three groups of migratory birds: game birds, insectivorous birds, and other nongame birds, and provided a season in which the birds of each group could not be taken “except for scientific or propagating purposes under permits.” With minor exceptions for hunting by Native Americans, the closed season on the last two categories was year-round. For migratory game birds, hunting seasons were not to exceed three and a half months. The taking of nests and eggs of all migratory birds was prohibited, except for scientific purposes. Thus ended the hobby of oology, or egg collecting. Penalties for breaking the law were six months in prison and $500 in fines, or both.

A treaty to protect migrating birds was negotiated with Mexico in 1936. Treaties with Japan and the USSR (now Russia) were added in 1972 and 1976. The MBTA is updated each time a treaty is added or modified.

The problem is different now. While wild birds are still undoubtedly being killed or captured and turned into commercial products, the evidence is mounting that it is the environment itself that is the culprit. People think of environmental laws like the Clean Air Act as primarily in place to protect humans, but of course they are there to protect the entire ecosystem. And like the treaties and earlier laws, environmental legislation needs to be updated and not dismantled.

Bill Chaisson, who has been a birdwatcher since age 11, is a former editor of the Eagle Times. He now works for the Town of Wilmot and lives in Sutton.