Loose Feathers #151

Cape May Warbler / Photo by Steve Maslowski (USFWS)

Bird and birding news

• Defenders of Wildlife is asking birders to sign a petition to preserve the boreal forest.
• Horseshoe crabs have been nearly absent from well-known spawning beaches around Cape May this spring. Beaches in Delaware also have a shortage of horseshoe crabs.
  
• A new report says that U.S. national wildlife refuges are underfunded by over $300 million annually.
  
• Stocking the Great Lakes with fish like trout and salmon has caused herring gulls' health to deteriorate. The introduced fish outcompete gulls for small fish like alewifes, and gulls are forced to rely on lower-quality food like garbage.
• Twenty-seven radio-tagged regent honeyeaters (Xanthomyza phrygia) have been released into the wild at Chiltern National Park in Australia to restore the species's population. The world population of regent honeyeaters may be as little as 1,000 individuals.
  
• An invasive mouse species on South Atlantic Island preys on seabird chicks and threatens to extirpate some species, such as the Tristan albatross.
• Last summer, birders in New Zealand conducted their first national survey of garden birds. Of the top ten birds counted, only two were native species.
• Signs and fencing to exclude off-road vehicles from a bird nesting area at Cape Hatteras were vandalized.
• Beauty, an injured bald eagle, has a new prosthetic beak. More information here.
• Five mallard ducklings died at the National Museum of the American Indian after they were sucked down a drain in one of the pools.
  

Birds in the blogosphere

• Wildbird: Do you bird in a national wildlife refuge?
• Birdist: Birds at Large: Jeep Liberty Commercial
• City Birder: Big Day of Biking & Birding
• OC Warbler: Love Story
• Sitka Nature: Winter Wren Nest
• The Marvelous in Nature: A mouthful of mud
  

Environment and climate

• A commentator for the Guardian finds problems with carbon-trading and carbon offsets. Offset programs are difficult to verify and allow polluters to keep sending emissions into the atmosphere.
• U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose 1.6% in 2007.
• Meanwhile, excess nitrogen is a growing concern. Nitrogen compounds in the environment can kill aquatic life; nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas. Ways to reduce one's nitrogen footprint include: reducing energy consumption, driving less, and eating more locally-grown (organic) vegetables and less (industrial) meat.
• Scientists in Michigan are girdling aspens to encourage their replacement by a more diverse forest, to test the influence of biodiversity on carbon capture.
• Maryland is cutting the state's female blue crab harvest by one-third, to preserve what remains of the Chesapeake's most famous crustacean.
• Some biofuel crops, like the giant reed (Arundo donax) and the African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacquin), could become invasive species.
• Audubon Magazine Blog: Part-time Environmentalism
• RealClimate: Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones (Yet Again)
  

Carnivals and newsletters

• Friday Ark #192
  
• Birds in the News #131
  

The Cost of Inaction

When it comes time to implement any sort of conservation measure, we often hear the familiar mantra that conservation will hurt the economy. This is certainly the case for wildlife protection. Last week, Secretary Kempthorne raised the objection in his decision to list polar bears as threatened but not address climate change, the chief cause of their decline. This week, Governor Palin of Alaska cited the same issue of economic harm as the state filed a lawsuit to overturn the listing.

The same holds true for climate change, even beyond wildlife protection. Never mind that EPA studies indicate that the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act would have minimal impact on the economy. Any measure to conserve energy and reduce emissions is met with howls of protest over the supposed economic devastation it would wreak. When that bill reaches the Senate floor, I expect that we will hear more of the same.

What gets lost in the noise is that climate change will have serious economic consequences if it goes unchecked. Economists at Tufts University concluded that aggressive action to reduce emissions would be less costly than to ignore climate change.

The Tufts study included a "bottom-up" analysis of the economic impacts in four categories and found that by 2100, annual costs would be $422 billion in hurricane damage; $360 billion in real estate losses, with the biggest risk on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, particularly Florida; $141 billion in increased energy costs; and $950 in water costs, especially in the West. (The estimates are expressed in today's dollars.)

That adds up to an annual loss by 2100 of 1.8 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, the sum of the nation's output of goods and services.

The study's "business as usual" scenario, in which emissions of greenhouse gases continued at an increasing rate, was taken from the high end of the range of likely outcomes of inaction described by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. The Tufts study also incorporated some later scientific findings.

The study projected that the average temperature would increase by 13 degrees Fahrenheit in most of the United States and by 18 degrees in Alaska in the next 100 years, bringing more severe heat waves, hurricanes and droughts.

The report also forecast stronger hurricanes as a result of higher sea surface temperatures; sea level rises of 23 inches by 2050 and 45 inches by 2100 that would inundate low-lying coastal areas; and higher air conditioning bills in the Southeast and Southwest that wouldn't be offset nationally by lower heating bills in the North.

The authors of the Tufts study also used a revised version of the model used by Nicholas Stern for his 2006 assessment of the cost of inaction on a global scale. Using that model, the Tufts economists found a U.S. loss of 3.6 percent of GDP by 2100.

The full report can be found here.

Almost all climate forecasts are given as a range of probabilities, with upper and lower bounds. The fact that this report used the IPCC's upper projection rather than the mean projection means that the economic impact could be somewhat less than the report's conclusions. There are also some areas of uncertainty in projecting the consequences of a warmer climate. For example, how much climate change will affect tropical cyclones is still subject to debate.

At the same time, some potential impacts seem to be excluded from the study's estimates. Climate change is likely to harm agricultural output (especially in the developing world) since many crops will not grow well at higher temperatures and severe droughts will become more common. Also excluded were costs associated with the effects of higher temperatures on human health. Meanwhile, loss of biodiversity – driven in part by warmer temperatures – has been estimated to cost 6% of the world's income.

All of these issues need to be front and center in the coming debate over how to forestall climate change. I believe that the human cost and loss of biodiversity should provide a powerful moral basis to take action and reduce our emissions. But we should not let denialists and opponents of reform appropriate economic arguments for themselves.

Review: The Young Birder's Guide by Bill Thompson

Recently I received a review copy of a new field guide for older children (8-12 years old). The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, by Bill Thompson III, aims inspire children to take more interest in the natural world. Thompson comes from a family of birdwatchers; his parents founded Bird Watcher's Digest and his wife, Julie Zickefoose, also paints and writes about birds. (I have reviewed one of her books on this blog.) Thompson wrote this field guide for his children and tested the book on his 11-year-old daughter's classmates.

The Young Birder's Guide begins with a useful introduction, which is a simplified version of what one might find in introductions to bird identification for adults. The guide introduces concepts such as narrowing down species by size and shape and includes advice about where to look for birds. It also provides some tips for helping birds, such as reducing use of harmful chemicals and keeping cats indoors.

The heart of the book consists of species accounts. Most species are given their own pages, except for a few that are paired. Each species page includes:

• photographs of the most common plumages
  
• a line drawing by Julie Zickefoose
• text with basic information on identification and distribution
  
• a range map
• a "WOW!" factoid, which is typically something unusual or distinctive about the species, such as the flight speed of an unladen turkey.
  

I am partial to painted illustrations for my own use, but the photographs for this guide were selected well and should provide an adequate basis for identification in combination with the text. The black-and-white illustrations by Julie Zickefoose add further identification clues and show each bird engaged in some typical behavior. They are especially helpful when some field marks are not obvious from the photographs.

The species order generally follows taxonomy, but Thompson often departs from evolutionary relationships to group species based on appearance or habitat. Thus horned lark and snow bunting, two birds that often forage together on open fields in winter, appear on facing pages. This feature ought to be helpful for beginning birders; when I started birding I often wished that guides were grouped by habitat to reduce page-flipping.

Only 200 bird species are included in this guide (as opposed to over 400 in the 4th edition Peterson and 650 for the eastern Sibley). Many warblers and sparrows are missing, including some easily-identified common migrants like black-throated blue and chestnut-sided warblers. The guide's coverage of gulls, shorebirds, seabirds, and flycatchers is also limited.

For most young readers this selection will be beneficial, as it will help them identify birds more easily and more accurately. If you live in the far north or deep south, the missing species might be a disadvantage. My recommendation is to check out this book's species coverage in a bookstore before buying if you live outside the continent's middle latitudes – roughly south of the boreal forest and north of Florida. If it has most of the common species for your area, then The Young Birder's Guide is an excellent option. If this guide lacks common species from your area, it might be better to try one of the more comprehensive guides (like Peterson's), or an appropriate regional guide instead.

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Bill Thompson III, The Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Pp. 256; illustrations, range maps, glossary, and index. $14.95. ISBN: 0547119348.

See also: Young Birder's Guide Companion (Download Version)

More Tampering?

Last December, Stephen Johnson of the EPA denied California's request to set its own emissions and fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. Under an exception to the Clean Air Act, California may set its own standards, and other states may follow them, as long as the state standards are approved by the EPA. Now it appears that Johnson was ready to approve California's standards until the White House interfered with the decision. The news comes as a result of an EPA official's testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Under the Clean Air Act, EPA can reject a waiver only if the administrator finds California's request falls short of one of several criteria. One of them is that the state doesn't need the standards "to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions."

Johnson has said there was nothing unique about California's situation that supported issuing the waiver. He testified in previous congressional hearings that he alone made the decision.

The memo said that Burnett, who is EPA's associate deputy administrator, told the committee that in the late summer and early fall of 2007: "I was under the general impression that the administrator was very interested in a full grant of the waiver."

Burnett said that Johnson also wanted him to explore a middle-ground option between a full grant of the petition and a denial. "I think that the level of his interest increased. . . following the various meetings that we had both within the agency and within other parts of the executive branch."

Burnett said that he and everyone else at EPA who gave opinions about the decision recommended a full grant of the waiver.

He said that Johnson told him why he changed his mind, but Burnett did not answer when asked what the reason was.

The accusation of tampering will not be news to anyone who has followed this administration's approach to environmental policy. There has been a long pattern of delay, obfuscation, and interference when a decision could impact corporate interests, whether the decision involves greenhouse gases, wildlife protection, or public health. The situation is so egregious that unlikely allies are starting to band together in opposition to the administration's policies.

New Red List Released

The 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has been released. BirdLife reports on the new results for bird species.

The 2008 Red List makes grim reading with 1,226 species of bird now threatened, and eight species newly uplisted to Critically Endangered, the highest threat category. Of the 26 species that changed category owing to changes in their population size, rate of decline or range size, 24 were uplisted to a higher level of threat. These include widespread continental species like Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata and Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata, both previously of Least Concern, and now regarded as Near Threatened in a global context.

In Australia, Mallee Emuwren Stipiturus mallee is undergoing a very rapid population decline, and its habitat is now so fragmented that a single bushfire could be catastrophic. Years of drought, particularly in the southern and western parts of the species’s range, have affected the health of the vegetation on which it relies and has almost led to the emuwren’s extinction in South Australia where the last significant population comprises 100 birds confined to 100 km².

In the Galápagos Islands, Floreana Mockingbird Nesomimus trifasciatus is confined to two islets off Floreana. Its population has declined from an estimated maximum of 150 individuals in 1966 to fewer than 60, and is now at risk from extreme weather events. As a result it has been uplisted to Critically Endangered.

In Papua New Guinea, deforestation caused by a rising demand for the cultivation of palm oil has led to species such as New Britain Goshawk Accipiter princeps being uplisted to a higher threat category.

A common theme among the species whose status worsened is the impact of climate change. Warmer average temperatures directly affect birds in many ways, such as longer and harsher droughts and stronger storms, both of which degrade critical habitat. Climate change also affects birds by changing the ranges or breeding times for many of the plants or prey species that birds require for food or shelter. These factors have varying effects on common species, but with rare or threatened species, they can push birds closer to the edge.

Here is the list of status changes for bird species. Here is a list of the birds in the U.S. and Canada that are listed as Endangered, Critically Endangered, or Extinct in the Wild. (Many birds on the U.S. list are from Hawaii.) If you want more detail on a particular species or group of species, you can find it through BirdLife's Datazone, which includes factsheets for all of the species in the database.

Information about other taxa on the Red List are available at the IUCN Red List website.

Plovers Washed Out

Last week's storms washed away many of New Jersey's piping plover nests.

• 14 of 21 nests monitored by the Conserve Wildlife Foundation were destroyed.
• 2 nests at Long Branch lost half their eggs.
• 9 nests were washed out at Sandy Hook, 2 nests were flooded but still being incubated, and 2 nests were unaffected.
• 1 nest in Holgate was washed out.

It is still early enough in the breeding season that piping plovers can try nesting again. Storms are one of many threats that piping plovers face. Others include predators, fireworks, harassment from beachgoers, and being run over by trucks.

Something's missing

A short-tailed (common) grackle at the birdbath.

Most birds molt feathers a few at a time, so that no group is entirely unrepresented at any given time. I suspect that this grackle lost its tail in a narrow escape from a predator, possibly a neighborhood cat.