Almost one-third fewer birds in North America than in 1970

Washington: North America's skies are lonelier and quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970, a comprehensive study shows.

A western meadowlark in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal
National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colorado.

The new study focuses on the drop in sheer numbers of birds, not extinctions. The bird population in the United States and Canada was probably about 10.1 billion nearly half a century ago and has fallen 29 per cent to about 7.2 billion birds, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science.

"People need to pay attention to the birds around them because they are slowly disappearing," said study lead author Kenneth Rosenberg, a Cornell University conservation scientist.

"One of the scary things about the results is that it is happening right under our eyes. We might not even notice it until it's too late."

Read the stray from The Age by Seth Borenstein - “Almost one-third fewer birds in North America than in 1970.”