Back to mobile
<< Multimedia

State of Texas: Climate Change Could Force Native Birds to Fly the Coop

by Published on
Source: Audubon Birds and Climate Change Report, 2014
Illustration by Joanna Wojtkowiak
Source: Audubon Birds and Climate Change Report, 2014
Tags: , ,

Houston native, 7th-generation Texan and Rice University graduate Brad Tyer has contributed to the Observer under five editors since the mid-1990s, including stints as freelance critic, contributing writer, interim editor, and two rounds as managing editor, from early 2008 to late 2009 and late 2012 to present. In the interim he's served as the Observer's long-distance copy editor. A former staffer at the Houston Press, former editor of the Missoula, Montana Independent , and widely published freelance (High Country News, New York Times Book Review, Public News, Texas Monthly, The Drake, Thora-Zine, etc.), Brad has been awarded a 2010 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan, a 2011 Fishtrap Writing Residency, and a 2011 grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism to support research for his first book, Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape, published by Beacon Press in 2013. Brad oversees the Observer's cultural coverage.

In early September, the National Audubon Society released a first-ever report examining the intertwined future of climate change and birds. Based on Audubon Christmas Bird Counts, the U.S. Geological Survey's North American Breeding Bird Surveys and widely accepted climate change scenarios, Audubon researchers predicted changes in the "climatic suitability" of extant habitats for 588 species of North American birds. The upshot? America's birds face a dramatically changing landscape, with the current range of many species either expanding, contracting or relocating entirely. Of the 588 North American species considered, Audubon defined 314 as "at risk" from global warming if trends proceed at their current pace. Some Texas birds, like the endangered black-capped vireo, will see their climatic range disappear in Texas and reappear in coastal California, with uncertain impact on the species' survival. Others, like the endangered golden-cheeked warbler endemic to Central Texas' Edwards Plateau, face almost certain extinction by the end of the century as their climatic sweet spot in Texas all but disappears. Grackles, on the other hand, appear to be doing just fine.