The Year of the Bird: Calling Attention to the Plight

by Katrina MacFarlane

You can’t imagine my excitement when I discovered that National Geographic Magazine had declared 2018 The Year of the Bird. There were articles about birds in every issue, including books, maps and social media content for me to ingest! It seemed a timely declaration as it was the centenary of Congress passing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. A nasty little article I read in the Washington Post casts a shadow on what Sarah Greenberger, Senior Vice President of Conservation Policy at the National Audubon Society, referred to as, “100 years of conservation leadership” in the US. As we might expect, any back-stepping from the protections laid out in this treaty will adversely affect bird populations not only in the US, but in Canada and many other regions. Clearly birds don’t care about borders. 

Jonathan Franzen and Joel Sartore’s article, “Why Birds Matter, in the January 2018 issue of National Geographic Magazine is a thing of beauty. Franzen makes an amazing case for why we should care for and protect these creatures. It’s extremely poignant that in the very first paragraph, he likens his idea of why birds are so important to explaining why he loves his own siblings. He goes on to discuss the similarities between humans and birds but also the differences, citing the main difference as “mastery of their environment” - something that humans have but birds do not. His assertion that humans are changing the earth faster than birds can adapt and that the current health of bird populations are indicative of “the health of our ethical values” is entirely valid. We live in a world that collectively values money above all else and we needn’t expend much effort to find mountains of evidence to that fact.

I am particularly struck by the question Franzen poses which addresses our responsibility as beings with consciousness, free will, and “the capacity to remember our pasts and shape our futures.” He asks,

“…shouldn’t our ability to discern right from wrong, and to knowingly sacrifice some small fraction of our convenience for a larger good, make us more susceptible to the claims of nature, rather than less? Doesn’t a unique ability carry with it a unique responsibility?”

I think many of us could agree that joy is most definitely an emotion we can associate with watching birds in our environment. In fact, I feel very lucky if a bird lets me get close enough to watch it for a while - it lifts my spirit and makes my days more manageable and, I might argue, makes life worth living. Birds do many other jobs too; they are great pollinators, seed dispersers, pest controllers, not to mention road kill cleaners!

In his book with Noah Strycker, Birds of the Photo Ark, Joel Sartore insightfully writes, “The future of birds, and us, are intertwined more than we know. We soar, or plummet, together.”

As a curious and creative human, you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you only read the January issue - please check out the February to December issues too! Here are just a few of the many bird related discoveries that were waiting in the pages of National Geographic in 2018:

I’m thankful to have learned so much more about these creatures, how they fit into evolutionary history and what threatens their survival. There are so many amazingly talented and dedicated souls working to care for and protect these vulnerable beings. Let’s hope the earth will always be alive with beautiful bird song.

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