The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) unveiled its new Birds of Conservation Concern 2021 report, highlighting 269 vulnerable bird species that require high conservation efforts.
The service hopes to diminish required ESA protections for birds.
“This has been a process that's been in the works for probably 20 years, and this time is the first that we tried to treat all the non-game birds with the same sort of approach,” Brad Andres, wildlife biologist, Migratory Bird Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said. “So whether you're an egret, a warbler or a shorebird, you know, we're kind of doing the exact same assessment system.”
This Chestnut-collared Longspur is the male of one of the species on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report.
| Rick Bohn
Andres, discussed the importance of the preservation, as well as various effective safeguarding methods that should be considered to protect the birds.
The organization conducted a conservation assessment test based on an overwhelming population and breeding threats such as insufficient grounds, FWS said. The main locations used for bird breeding include Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Navassa and other continental U.S regions containing bird conservation regions and Marine Bird Conservation Regions.
The current report reveals that half of the identified species are of conservation concern at the continental-scale, 85 at the BCR scale, 30 on Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and 33 on Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. The analysis was last updated in 2008, according to FWS.
The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act contributes to the identification of “species subspecies, and populations of all migratory non-game birds that, without additional conservation actions, are likely to become candidates for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)," FWS reports. The results will be used for research and monitoring purposes through a special collaboration with global, federal, state, tribal and private partners.
“It's a lot of working with partners and also trying to leverage the Department of Agriculture's farm bill programs to benefit bird habitats on the breeding grounds through things like the Conservation Reserve Program and Wetland Reserve Program,” Andres said.
The bird species considered for the BCC include: non-game birds, game birds without hunting seasons, subsistence-hunted non-game birds in Alaska, ESA candidate, proposed and recently delisted species. According to Andres, the two main causes of mortality for the bird special include maintaining cats indoors, reducing collisions inside the home, often caused by glass reflections and bird-friendly cattle production.
“There’s a pretty strong buy-in by the bird conservation community because they've all had a hand or at least a lot of folks in developing, you know, the scoring for these criteria,” Andres said. “It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone because it aligns with what's been done in the past.”
