Oregon

This August marks the 100^th anniversary of the first Migratory Bird Treaty.  In this Centennial year celebrating our earliest efforts towards international migratory bird protection, our three countries are uniting once again with a “State of North America’s Birds”  report– a groundbreaking collaboration to evaluate bird populations in nine key ecosystems across the continent.  This report, developed by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and built using data collected by tens of thousands of citizen scientists across North America, is a call to action to governments, private industry, and the public to come together to support a beloved shared resource: our migratory birds.  Of the 1154 bird species that occur in North America, one third are on the report’s Watch List.  More than half of North American seabirds are on the Watch List, threatened by ocean pollution, over-fishing, energy extraction, invasive species on islands that depredate nests, and climate change.  Specific ecosystems are mentioned in the report in which Washington, Oregon and California have habitats of concern: oceans, shorelines and coastal areas, arid grasslands and shrub-steppe, and western temperate forests.

Article by: Judith Scarl, Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies/ North American Bird Conservation Initiative