Killing Birds by the Billions

A flock of ducks flies over the land, blue sky and warming spring breezes. The birds see a pond reflecting the bright sun and drop onto its surface… never to fly again. The pond doesn’t contain water, but a pool of oil waste and the birds’ feathers are soon coated with a thick sludge. Until recently, the oil company that left this pond open to birds used to be liable for bird deaths. But the Donald Trump administration repealed regulations that protected birds from industrial hazards. Now the oil company has no legal reason to protect birds. Around one million birds a year die on oil ponds and the number will now go up sharply thanks to the Trump administration.

Let’s remember the years before World War One when women, encouraged by the fashion industry, loved to wear hats with bright white feathers adorning them. Women strutted around the cities of Europe and the eastern US wearing these fashionable hats. Snowy egrets, from whom the feathers were taken, could strut no more. Hunters slaughtered them by the millions so hat-makers could make money.

Congress responded to the near extinction of egrets and other birds by passing the Migratory Bird Protection Treaty Act in 1918. The law made killing most wild bird species a crime. The Act codified a treaty, signed with Great Britain (on behalf of Canada), and created a domestic law. Since migratory birds cross state boundaries, their protection is a federal responsibility. The underlying treaty was later signed by Mexico, Russia, and Japan. The Audubon Society estimates that the MBPTA has saved billions of birds from human caused death.

The Donald Trump administration effectively gutted the MBPTA. We can only hope the other signatory countries don’t follow suit. Congress and a future president very likely will reverse this misguided action, perhaps as soon as 2020, but birds face increasing danger in the mean time.

Hunters and the fashion industry threatened birds at the turn of the century. Today birds face threats from energy, buildings, domestic cats, and communications. Electrical power-lines kill up to 64 million birds each year while bird collisions with communications towers kill around 7 million. Wind farms kill around a quarter of a million birds and oil wells, toxic gas, spills, waste ponds, and flaring by the oil industry kills untold millions more.

These deaths are not inevitable. Industry can take inexpensive steps to protect birds in many situations. Until very recently, the MBPTA required industry to take all measures possible to protect birds, but the Donald Trump administration decided protecting birds was a burden on industry and the economy and repealed regulations protecting birds. Now the oil industry, for example, need not cover oil or waste ponds, or worry about oil spills at sea, or pipeline breaks that pollute streams, or filling or polluting wetlands that thousands of birds rely on for food and nesting. One of the oldest and most successful wildlife protection laws in history has been severely weakened by Trump’s simple- minded drive to deregulate industry.

In legal terms, killing birds incidentally, and not with direct intent, is calling “taking.” Taking birds in the way I’ve described is exempted by the new Trump regulations. The Endangered Species Act also addresses “taking” of birds and other animals by industry.

The Good News

The president can only go so far in changing regulations that agencies have drawn up to enforce laws passed by past congresses and presidents. The US Fish and Wildlife Service issues regulations and enforces the MBPTA. Courts can strike down regulatory changes if new regulations no longer reflect the intent of Congress. Multiple public interest groups will sue the Trump administration for their changes to the MBPTA and the likely death of billions of birds that likely will result.

Many environmental groups sued the Trump administration hundreds of times since he took office because of executive actions to weaken environmental laws or because of outright violations of law by his administration. New suits mount daily and a majority are successful in striking down Trump moves. Rather than slow down or reconsider, the Trump team has speeded up its efforts to weaken or remove environmental protections across the board, often moving ahead with damaging decisions even after the courts struck them down. During the coronavirus emergency, the Trump team has intensified their deregulation efforts. Yet the administration is required to seek public comment on many of these regulatory changes. They shorten comment periods to the minimum and then completely ignore public comment that dissents from their chosen path.

Many birds migrate between countries or between states and these birds rely on a safe and clean environment over a wide area. Birds are dying in record numbers because of human development, pesticides, building windows, domestic cats, declining insect populations, and industrial activity. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology released a study revealing that 3 billion birds have been wiped out since 1970. Even the most common birds like sparrows and juncos are in steep decline.

These facts are alarming. Our natural world is coming apart and birds are a critical part of all ecosystems. And with the State of Alaska and the Trump administration trying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to widespread oil development, one of the key refuge areas for billions of birds could soon become an industrial wasteland. Oil development and overgrazing by cattle ruins bird habitat on millions of acres of public lands.

Do Americans care? Are we numb to the daily onslaught of bad news from the Trump people? Are we so lost in computer-land, children-land, and the urban world that we’ve lost touch with nature that absolutely sustains us? If we can’t collectively care about birds, which everyone enjoys no matter their level of understanding, then we may be in worse trouble than we thought.

-Tom Ribe