BIRDS AND WATER

 

This year’s theme for the May Migratory Bird Day (Global Bird Day)  is WATER: Sustaining Bird Life. Jim and I once again traveled our small island in search of the number of species still around after migration, especially of the water birds and the arrival of summer species.

 While so much of the world is suffering from lack of water, we in the Pacific Northwest are blessed to have such an abundance of this vital resource.

Water is fundamental to sustaining life on our planet. Migratory birds rely on water and its associated habitats—lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, swamps, marshes, and coastal wetlands—for breeding, resting, refueling during migration, and wintering. Yet increasing human demand for water, along with climate change, pollution, and other factors, are threatening these precious aquatic ecosystems.

Headlines around the world are sounding alarm: 35 percent of the world’s wetlands, critical to migratory birds, have been lost in the last 50 years. Utah’s Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and used by more than a million shorebirds, is in danger of disappearing within five years.

Across the Amur-Heilong Basin in Asia, climate change is amplifying the impact of habitat destruction by depleting natural water systems and depriving migratory birds of vital breeding and stopover site. Lake Chad, one of the largest water bodies in Africa in 1960, lost 90 % of its area, depleting water resources for local communities and also for many migratory birds.

 Reports are sobering examples which reveal that 48 percent of bird species worldwide are undergoing population declines.

 World Migratory Bird Day serves as an international call to action for the protection of migratory birds, whose ranges often span multiple countries, and are facing many different threats worldwide.