Bird Calamity

KEDM Public Radio | By Kelby Ouchley

Published January 13, 2020 at 10:21 AM EST

An article recently published in the journal Science rattled the American conservation community like no other. The paper summed up the results of multi-faceted research by the premier avian science groups in the country. It included analyses of years of breeding population data on 529 species of birds. Additionally, it considered decades of radar data that track bird migrations. It's the best science that exists, and it says there are almost 3 billion fewer birds in North America than 48 years ago; more than I in 4 have disappeared.

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Kelby Ouchley

Kelby was a biologist and manager of National Wildlife Refuges for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than 30 years. He has worked with alligators in gulf coast marshes and Canada geese on Hudson Bay tundra. His most recent project was working with his brother Keith of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy on the largest floodplain restoration project in the Mississippi River Basin at the Mollicy Unit of the Upper Ouachita National Wildlife Refuge, reconnecting twenty-five square miles of former floodplain forest back to the Ouachita River.

See stories by Kelby Ouchley