New paper: Acceleration of declines in bird populations across North America
New Paper out!
François, Marta and collaborator Petr Keil published a new paper in Science showing that North American birds are declining at an accelerating rate and that acceleration hotspots are associated with agriculture. The work was partially funded by the National Science Foundation grant.
Abstract
Human activities might have accelerated declines of population abundance, but this acceleration remains under-explored. Using 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes, we analyze abundance change and its acceleration for 261 bird species, 54 avian families, and 10 habitats from 1987 to 2021. We show an average continent- wide decline of abundance of all birds per local route, with hotspots of decline in southern and warm parts of North America and hotspots of accelerating decline in the Mid- Atlantic, Midwest, and California, matching patterns of agricultural intensity. Overall, 122 species (47%) exhibit significant declines, of which 63 also show acceleration of this decline, and 67 show declining per- capita growth rate, raising concerns for a large part of North American bird populations. These fi ndings suggest that bird abundance decline is mostly accelerating, with spatial patterns of this acceleration indicating that agricultural intensity may be a driver of this trend.