Bird species across Virginia continue to decline in line with national trends, an alarming new study confirms.
A coalition of science and conservation groups released the latest national State of the Birds report, a “status check” conducted every few years. It builds upon a well-known 2019 study in the journal “Science” that estimated a net loss of more than three billion birds in North America since 1970.
“America is still losing birds,” authors wrote in this month’s report.
Bryan Watts, a research professor at William & Mary and founding director of the university’s Center for Conservation Biology, said the data “reinforces ongoing trends that we've been seeing for, in some cases, decades now.”
And “Virginia happens to be on the front lines of declines,” he said.
Coastal Virginia is of particular importance for shorebirds, a group that the national report listed as the most imperiled of any in North America.
Out of 28 shorebird species, 19 experienced marked declines since 1980 – many despite recent conservation efforts, according to the report. Those include red knots, killdeer and sandpipers.
Virginia is part of the western Atlantic Flyway, an avian highway migrating species use to move along the East Coast.
During spring and fall, many species stop in Virginia on their way to and from breeding grounds in the Arctic, Watts said.
“It's the last staging area on their route,” he said. “So the fat that they gain here can really make a difference for their breeding season.”
The seaside of the Eastern Shore, home to Virginia’s protected barrier islands, is a hotspot for shorebirds.
But the area is also a hotspot for sea level rise, which has become “one of the great drivers” of recent bird declines, Watts said.
Species like seaside sparrows and black rails depend on tidal marshes that are starting to disappear.
Officials are even seeing fewer laughing gulls, which were historically the most abundant seabird in Virginia, Watts said.
“They have been declining dramatically because the places where they used to nest in salt marshes are underwater now.”
Beyond the coast, Virginia is also part of a regional trend of losses to Eastern forest bird species.
Virginia saw “tremendous regrowth” of forest habitat after extensive deforestation during the Civil War, Watts said. But there is less habitat for birds that rely on shrubby areas, such as field sparrows and prairie warblers.
It’s partially an unintended consequence of the strategies wildlife officials use to tend and manage forests, known as silviculture.
“The silvicultural practices used broadly now are cleaner than they used to be. So there's less shrub land, and the young forests and the bird communities associated with those have really been suffering,” Watts said.
The global expansion of avian flu is also a growing concern for the wild bird population.
“It’s one of the scariest things that we have seen for our bird populations probably since the DDT (insecticide) event in the 1950s and ‘60s,” Watts said. “For some of these species, avian flu is putting their conservation advances all the way back 40 years.”
There was one bright spot in the national report: the rebound of the American oystercatcher.
A multi-state oystercatcher recovery initiative launched in 2009 helped stem declines and ignite a 43% increase in the species’ regional breeding population, officials said.
Watts said Virginia played a key role by managing predator mammals on barrier islands.
