The release of the 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report was announced today at the 90th annual North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The report, produced by a coalition of leading science and conservation organizations, reveals continued widespread declines in American bird populations across all mainland and marine habitats, with 229 species requiring urgent conservation action. The report comes five years after the landmark 2019 study that documented the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over 50 years.
Sometimes I let myself think about life before “civilization”:
The stories of flocks of migrating birds numbering in the millions, darkening the skies for more than a day.
The plains with an ocean of waving grasses that sustained millions of buffalo, and the symbiotic chain of animal life that thrived in their wake.
The thousands of waterfalls that cascaded into freely flowing rivers and sustained riparian zones filled with vertebrates and insects.
Forests full of trees that were thousands of years old, sheltering the abundant wildlife.
I think of fireflies and bees and the absence of machine sounds, and I kinda wish I could go back in time to just … prevent hominins.