Climate change will disrupt habitats of over half of North American birds, Audubon Society says

A National Audubon Society report says that climate change will force more than half of the approximately 650 species of birds in North America to find new places to live, feed and breed over the next 65 years, Felicity Barringer reports for The New York Times. Researchers said that 21.4 percent of existing bird species will lose “more than half of the current climactic range by 2050 without the potential to make up losses by moving to other areas.” Another 32 percent of birds will suffer the same fate by 2080.

Researchers say the oriole will no longer
be able to live in Maryland. (Getty Images)

"Among the most threatened species are the three-toed woodpecker, the northern hawk owl, the northern gannet, Baird’s sparrow, the rufous hummingbird and the trumpeter swan, the report said," Barringer writes. "They are among the 30 species that, by 2050, will no longer be able to live and breed in more than 90 percent of their current territory." Researchers say some species can successfully relocate to other areas, but the ones that depend on certain habitats for survival will run out of the necessary resources to survive.

"The report’s predictions are based on both United Nations estimates of the effects of climate change in 2050 and 2080, and on two voluminous surveys of birds: the Audubon Society’s own Christmas bird count, which thousands of volunteers have worked on for decades, and a more general annual survey of breeding birds," Barringer writes. "The latter was started by the federal government in 1914; amateur birders began the Christmas bird count a few years earlier." (Read more)