This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Even in protected areas, birds are disappearing from America's prairies, and unpredictable weather isn't helping. That's the takeaway from a new study by researchers at Michigan State University, Oklahoma State University and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
The study, published in the journal Ecological Applications, analyzed 16 years of bird survey data at 40 tallgrass prairie sites in western Minnesota. The sites were all protected areas—a mix of state parks, wildlife management areas and private conservation easements. Researchers returned to the same spots again and again between 2008 and 2023, watching and listening for bird species that appeared during the summer breeding season.
The results suggest that bird nesting season in the Minnesota prairie isn't quite what it used to be. Visitors might still hear the buzzy song of the dickcissel, for example, or see the tuxedo-like plumage of the bobolink. But the long, drawn-out whistle of the upland sandpiper, which flies all the way from South America, has faded.
And birds like the Savannah sparrow and the sedge wren have become harder to spot. While grassland specialists fared worse than birds that use multiple habitats, even some generalists, such as mourning doves that coo under bird feeders and red-winged blackbirds that perch on fence posts, are less common today than they were 15 to 20 years ago. "I've been a birder since I was a kid, and I think of some of these species as pretty widespread," said lead author Neil Gilbert, who did the research while working as a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University.
"That means these losses aren't just happening for rare species," added Gilbert, now an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University. "It's common birds that you drive past every day and see in your backyard." Overall, for the 33 species monitored in the study, the likelihood of spotting birds in the protected areas dropped by 22% over the 16-year period. That grassland birds are struggling came as no surprise.
A landmark 2019 study led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimated that the number of birds in the U.S. and Canada has fallen by nearly 30% in the last half-century. That's 3 billion birds lost. The same study found that grassland birds were among the hardest hit, with their populations cut in half since the 1970s.
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