
Prairie birds — including Illinois' dapper bobolink — in steep decline, study says
By no means depleted, the plucky visitor goes on to dazzle the females of his species with a high-energy courtship display in which he soars over wildflower-studded fields, flapping his wings rapidly and singing a bright, burbling tune.
In the vast nature preserves surrounding the city, he is joined by the crafty eastern meadowlark, the elusive Henslow's sparrow, the stubby grasshopper sparrow, the tiny sedge wren and the gold-splashed dickcissel.
'If you go to a grassland in the Chicago area — if it's big enough — you're going to see those birds,' said Chicago Bird Alliance President Judy Pollock. 'The whole area used to look like that so it's kind of like going back in time.'
But if iconic grassland birds still appear to flourish here, the story is very different when the camera pans out across the Midwest and the Great Plains, according to the latest State of the Birds Report by scientists at U.S. bird conservation groups.
The nation's grassland birds, spread across 320 million acres in 14 states, have declined 43% since 1970, more than any other category, and are 'in crisis,' according to the report, released in March.
Overall, the study found that about a third of American bird species are of high or moderate conservation concern.
Even duck populations — previously a bright spot, with strong increases since 1970 — have trended downward in recent years, the report said.
'The bird conservation community and scientists sounded the alarm in 2019 about these declines,' said Amanda Rodewald, a professor and senior director at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Center for Avian Population Studies.
'We're a little over five years out and we're seeing they're becoming steeper — some of these trends. We know this is happening. We're now showing we have tools and data sets (that can help) managers and decision-makers to know specifically where they need to direct some conservation. What we need is the will to act.'
The study encourages practices such as coastal restoration, conservation ranching and seabird translocation, or transporting birds to locations where they are likely to thrive.
For grassland birds, which are losing 1 million to 2 million acres of habitat annually in the Great Plains, the study highlights solutions such as improved grazing practices for cattle and sheep, invasive plant removal, investment in grassland conservation and converting low-quality cropland to grassland.
The landmark 2019 study, which found that the North American bird population had dropped by nearly 3 billion since 1970, focused on the nation as a whole, while the new study focuses on birds that require certain specific habitats, such as forests and coastlines.
Those birds are better indicators of change in a particular habitat because they don't just dip in and out of it — they depend on it for survival.
In the case of grassland birds, including those in Illinois, the news isn't good. The study says birds that need grassland habitat are in crisis.
One measure the study looked at was 'tipping point' species status, which signals that a bird has lost more than 50% of its population within the past 50 years.
Shorebirds had the most tipping point species, with 19. Grassland birds had eight tipping point species, including the plucky bobolink and another Chicago classic, the Henslow's sparrow.
The bobolink was listed as an 'orange-alert' tipping point species, second only to the 'red-alert' category. Orange-alert status is for birds showing 'long-term population losses and accelerated recent declines within the past decade.'
The Henslow's sparrow was listed as a 'yellow-alert' with 'long-term population losses but relatively stable recent trends' and 'continued conservation efforts needed to sustain recovery.'
A total of 9% of the breeding population of Henslow's sparrows and 5% of the breeding population of meadowlarks are in Illinois, according to Jim Giocomo, the American Bird Conservancy's central region director.
The study's findings are important in part, he said, because humans live in the same environment as birds.
'Birds are literally our canary in the coal mine,' he said. 'The bird needs the same stuff we do but reacts to changes in the environment faster.'
Water availability, air pollution, chemicals and the decline of insect populations all can affect birds.
The eastern meadowlark, a fairly common sight for grassland birders in the Chicago area, wasn't singled out for concern in the study. But the LeConte's sparrow, lark bunting and western meadowlark — all grassland birds — were among the species that experienced the largest declines in the Midwest and Great Plains.
The LeConte's sparrow migrates through Illinois, and some western meadowlarks summer here. Lark buntings are generally found farther west.
The Chicago-area birding community has been working to restore grassland habitat for at least 20 years, according to Pollock, and forest preserve districts in and around Chicago have made good progress.
The Forest Preserves of Cook County, for instance, has removed trees and connected pieces of land to create sprawling prairies for grassland birds, which nest on the ground.
'They need really large areas to hide their nests from predators,' Pollock said. 'One hundred acres is small for them. They really want 1,000, 2,000 acres.'
The big grassland preserves in the region include Bartel Grassland and Bobolink Meadow near Tinley Park, Orland Grassland near Orland Park, Busse Woods near Elk Grove Village and Paul Douglas Preserve in Hoffman Estates.
A 2022 study by the nonprofit Bird Conservation Network found that dozens of birds, including the Henslow's sparrow, are doing surprisingly well in Chicago — likely because of the region's many parks and nature preserves, which cover nearly 10% of land in the six-county area.
Of 104 key species tracked in the study, 56% had stable or increasing populations in the Chicago region, while only 37% were stable or increasing in other areas of the state.
At the time, only about 410,000 breeding Henslow's sparrows remained in the world, and the birds were declining nationally.
However, the conservation network study found the birds were up an average of 3.4% per year in the Chicago area.
The bobolink was a different story, with the study finding the local bobolink population was down 2.9% per year since 1999.
Among the possible explanations: A lot of restored grasslands in the area tend to be dominated by tall grasses, and bobolinks may prefer a mix of grasses and flowering plants, Bird Conservation Network President Eric Secker told the Tribune in 2022. It was also possible that an international decline in insects, which is increasingly of concern to scientists, may have been reducing the birds' food supply.
Lastly, the problem may not have been limited to this region — or even this country, he said. Bobolinks are poisoned by farmers in Central and South America, where the birds feed on crops.
Solutions to the grassland bird decline vary among regions, although all rely on increasing or improving habitat. In the Great Plains, Rodewald highlighted the work of the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies, which encourages voluntary conservation by farmers and ranchers.
'People rely on the land for their livelihoods, and so any approaches that we're using to preserve birds in those areas needs to be really grounded in voluntary conservation measures,' Rodewald said.
In Illinois, 'agricultural intensification,' in which farmers squeeze more production out of their land, is a major contributor to grassland bird decline, she said. Agricultural intensification means bigger farms, larger single-crop areas, less rest for the land, fewer hedgerows and more chemicals.
Among the potential solutions: The government can give farmers financial incentives to return land to a more natural state, as in the farm bill's conservation reserve program.
The farm bill is a comprehensive package of legislation that sets agriculture and food policy and is supposed to be updated every five years. The 2018 farm bill has been extended twice as Republicans and Democrats argue about what should be included.
Bobolink-conscious management of hay fields also can help in Illinois, Pollock said. The birds lay several sets of eggs in the course of a summer, and mowing can prove fatal to the young.
'They're crunching up lots of baby bobolinks, and other grassland birds,' Pollock said.
The solutions include mowing in May, which discourages nesting. That's a good approach when conditions are right, Pollock said, but sometimes it's too wet to mow.
Rodewald said data on birds has improved, thanks to the efforts of volunteers and advances such as the popular eBird app, which allows everyday birders to submit detailed reports on their sightings.
'It's really adding to our ability to detect and diagnose population changes — and that, fundamentally, allows us to respond to them in ways that are more proactive, more cost-efficient and more effective on the ground,' she said.
For example, scientists can use eBird data to determine where installing a solar array is least likely to affect a sensitive bird population, or where a conservation measure — say, adding more trees — can benefit humans as well as birds.
'Despite the bad news, I think that because we have more information than ever and knowledge is power, we do have reason to hope,' Rodewald said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Post
4 hours ago
- New York Post
Smithsonian exhibit monkeys around with the scientific evidence on human origins
The Trump Administration recently called out the Smithsonian Institution for pushing 'one-sided, divisive political narratives,' leading GOP Sen. Jim Banks last week to introduce a bill prohibiting the Smithsonian from promoting woke ideology, as The Post exclusively reported. But American history isn't the only domain in which the Smithsonian, with an ideological ax to grind, advances misinformation. The National Museum of Natural History's Hall of Human Origins vastly distorts the scientific evidence on human evolution, seeking to convince visitors that there's nothing special about us as human beings. 'There is only about a 1.2% genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees,' the exhibit starts, with large photos of a human and apes. 'You and chimpanzees [are] 98.8% genetically similar.' 6 The Trump Administration recently called out the Smithsonian Institution for pushing 'one-sided, divisive political narratives.' Shutterstock / Paulm1993 No doubt you've heard this statistic before because many science popularizers say the same thing. Yet it's been known for years that these numbers are inaccurate. Thanks to a groundbreaking April paper in the journal Nature, we know just how wrong they are. For the first time, the paper reports 'complete' sequences of the genomes of chimpanzees and other apes done from scratch. When we compare them to humans, we find our genomes are more like 15% genetically different from chimpanzees'. That means the true genetic differences between humans and chimps are more than 10 times greater than what the Smithsonian tells us. The museum distorts human origins in other areas, too. Again, the purpose is to diminish the exceptional place of humans in nature. 6 The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins exhibit is seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. AP The museum's Human Origins fossil hall claims the ancient species Sahelanthropus tchadensis was an 'early human' that walked 'on two legs.' But leading paleoanthropologists sharply dispute this claim. A Nature article found that 'Sahelanthropus was an ape,' and many features 'link the specimen with chimpanzees, gorillas or both, to the exclusion of hominids.' A 2020 Journal of Human Evolution paper showed that Sahelanthropus' femur was like that of a chimp-like quadruped — in other words, it didn't walk upright, and it wasn't a human ancestor. 6 The Smithsonian exhibit presents ape-like australopithecines as 'early humans' who walked upright 'on the ground' much like us, but many scientists don't agree with this characterization, according to reports. Courtesy of Casey Luskin Similarly, the Human Origins exhibit presents the ape-like australopithecines as 'early humans' who walked upright 'on the ground' much like us. Some paleoanthropologists agree. But other scientists strongly disagree, pointing out that some australopithecines showed evidence of ape-like knuckle-walking and only limited capacity for running. Their upright-walking ability was likely best suited for walking along tree limbs, not 'on the ground' exactly like we do. Large questions remain about how they walked, and the Smithsonian gives no hint of the scientific controversy. 6 The museum had a display of *Australopithecus africanus* bust in 2010. Courtesy of Casey Luskin The museum's hominid reconstructions also humanize apes while ape-ifying humans. Australopithecus afarensis (the iconic 'Lucy') is portrayed thoughtfully gazing up at the sky, while Australopithecus africanus is presented smiling, perhaps at a friend's wry remark. Yet australopithecines had brains about the size of a chimp's, and there's no fossil evidence they were capable of abstract thought — or humor. We should remember the famed Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton's declaration that 'alleged restorations of ancient types of man have very little, if any, scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public.' 6 The exhibit asserts that humans and chimpanzees are '98.8% genetically similar,' but recently published research found our genomes are more like 15% different from chimpanzees. Courtesy of Casey Luskin The Smithsonian's exhibit also gives scientifically misleading support to the idea humans evolved slowly — saying 'we became human gradually,' much as Darwin imagined, from 'earlier primates.' Again, the result is to blur distinctions between us and other creatures. Yet the great Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr acknowledged there is a 'large, unbridged gap' in the fossil record between the australopithecines and the first humanlike members of our genus, Homo. In his words, we're in a position of 'not having any fossils that can serve as missing links.' One scientific commentator even said this evidence calls for a 'big bang theory of human evolution.' Why doesn't the Smithsonian disclose any of this information? 6 July marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes 'monkey' trial. AP This month is the centennial of the Scopes 'monkey' trial, remembered as a warning against hiding scientific information about human evolution. How ironic that 100 years later, the nation's premier science museum obscures scientifically objective data on the very same subject. To fail to correct this exhibit is to use taxpayer money to miseducate the public about a question of profound scientific, sociological, and philosophical importance. Casey Luskin is the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture's associate director and co-author of the book 'Science and Human Origins.' He holds a geology Ph.D. from the University of Johannesburg.


CNBC
10 hours ago
- CNBC
China releases AI action plan days after the U.S. as global tech race heats up
SHANGHAI — The tech race between the world's two largest economies just intensified. China on Saturday released a global action plan for artificial intelligence, calling for international cooperation on tech development and regulation. The news came as the annual state-organized World Artificial Intelligence Conference kicked off in Shanghai with an opening speech by Premier Li Qiang, who announced that the Chinese government has proposed the establishment of a global AI cooperation organization, according to an official readout. Days earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an American action plan for AI that included calls to reduce alleged "woke" bias in AI models and support the deployment of U.S. tech overseas. "The two camps are now being formed," said George Chen, partner at the Asia Group and co-chair of the digital practice. "China clearly wants to stick to the multilateral approach while the U.S. wants to build its own camp, very much targeting the rise of China in the field of AI," Chen said. He noted how China may attract participants from its Belt and Road Initiative, while the U.S. will likely have the support of its allies, such as Japan and Australia. In his speech, Premier Li emphasized China's "AI plus" plan for integrating the tech across industries and said the country was willing to help other nations with the technology, especially in the Global South. The category loosely refers to less developed economies, especially countries outside the U.S. and European orbits. Since 2022, the U.S. has sought to restrict China's access to advanced semiconductors for training AI models. Earlier this month, U.S. chipmaker Nvidia said the U.S. was allowing it to resume shipments of a less advanced H20 chip to China after a roughly three-month pause. However, China has been developing homegrown alternatives, which Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang both praised and described as "formidable" during his third trip to China this month. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt met with Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining on Thursday in the city ahead of the AI conference, according to a city announcement. Schmidt did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.


Los Angeles Times
10 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Serious liver disease is up among heavy drinkers, even without more drinking
Serious liver disease is becoming more common among Americans who drink heavily, according to a new study from Keck Medicine of USC. It's not that more people are partying with alcohol. And it's not that the drinkers are having more drinks. It's that more of the people who drink regularly are becoming sick. Over the last two decades, the share of heavy drinkers who have advanced liver scarring jumped from 1.8% to 4.3%. For women, more than 1.5 drinks per night, on average, is considered heavy drinking. For men, it's 2 drinks. 'The fact that the risk not only increased but that it more than doubled — almost tripled — is really astonishing,' said Dr. Brian P. Lee, a liver transplant specialist at Keck Medicine of USC and lead author on the study. It was published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology on Wednesday. Lee said he thinks patients might dramatically change their thinking and behavior if they had this information. The increase in illness was seen especially in women, older people and those with conditions like obesity or diabetes. Three USC researchers analyzed national health data from more than 44,000 adults surveyed between 1999 and 2020 in a well-known national heath study known as NHANES. Of those, 2,474 were heavy drinkers according to the definition of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — 20 grams of alcohol per day for women and 30 grams for men, roughly the equivalent of 1.5 and 2 drinks. They found a more than twofold increase over the two decades in significant liver fibrosis, a condition where healthy liver tissue is replaced by stiff, fibrous tissue — like a sponge hardening into leather. If left unchecked, this can eventually lead to liver failure or cancer. By comparison, non-heavy drinkers saw a much smaller increase, from 0.8% to 1.4% over the same period. This rise in liver damage is especially troubling because many people don't realize anything is wrong until the disease is advanced. 'Liver disease is silent,' Lee said. 'Most people won't, even if they have [advanced liver scarring], have any symptoms at all.' Drinking patterns did not change much over the study period. But the health profiles of heavy drinkers did. Rates of metabolic syndrome — a cluster of conditions including obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure — increased from 26% of people, to nearly 38%. Demographics shifted too: heavy drinkers became more likely to be women, people over the age of 45, and those living in poverty. 'We're showing with this study that the picture of the American drinker is changing dramatically,' Lee said. 'You have more women who are drinking heavily, more ethnic minorities who are drinking heavily, and these are groups that are known to have a higher sensitivity to alcohol in causing liver damage.' Other factors may also be at play, said Dr. Sammy Saab, medical director of the Pfleger Liver Institute at UCLA, who was not involved in the study. People could be consuming different types of drinks, or at different times. 'Have we moved away from beer, wine, to hard cocktails? Have we moved away from drinking with food, where the food absorbs some of the alcohol you consume, versus drinking without food where alcohol is better absorbed?' Saab asked. Then there are cultural changes, he said. 'In the old days, if you drank, you'd still have to drive home, but now we've got Uber, we have Lyft,' he said, which may remove some deterrents to heavy drinking. The current definition of heavy drinking in the U.S. may actually be too lenient, Lee said, especially compared to evolving global standards. Canada, for example, now advises no more than two drinks per week to minimize health risks. 'In the U.S. right now, we consider heavy drinking to be eight drinks or more per week for women and 15 or more for men — but that's quite high,' he said. 'We've shown in prior studies that you can develop liver disease at lower quantities than the U.S. threshold.' The study's findings highlight the need to rethink long-held assumptions about alcohol-related liver disease, and Lee hopes it can be used to develop more effective screening methods for early detection. The paper raises a lot of good questions, Saab said, serving as a call to action for researchers and clinicians to better understand this increase in alcohol-associated liver disease — and how to stop it.