Bird & Nature Blog
A clutch of the latest stories from Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance
You may have heard about the proposed large-scale solar energy energy project in the Buena Vista Wildlife Area (near Stevens Point). This Important Bird Area provides critical habitat for one of Wisconsin’s dwindling but beloved species, the Greater Prairie-Chicken. You have an opportunity to weigh in on this matter by Friday, June 14.
Photo by USFWS Midwest
If you had the power to save birds by making a small change, wouldn’t you?
Birds face many threats, including habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, and climate change. This year has been especially tough.
The severe winter storm in the south this past February is suspected to have caused significant bird deaths in migratory bird populations. A mysterious bird illness reported in the East Coast is continuing to spread into the Midwest, killing and sickening even more songbirds. And, hundreds of millions―even up to a billion―birds die each year in the United States after colliding with windows.
In spite of these devastating difficulties, there is hope.
Indigo Bunting photo by Kelly Colgan Azar.
In the last days of the Trump administration, the Department of Interior ended some protection of migratory birds. The rollback consisted of removing penalties for actions that killed or injured birds but were perpetrated without the intention of killing birds. One past example of such an act was popularly cited: the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster which released millions of gallons of oil and destroyed hundreds of thousands of birds (and many other creatures). One that resonated with me would be a person or company who deliberately used a banned pesticide. Even if that poison killed many birds, the perpetrator would not be liable under the Trump Administration's revised regulations because the intent was to kill some sort of pest, not birds. This loss of protection changed the interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that has protected migratory birds for decades.
Photo by Monica Hall
