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According to a new study, U.S. pollution regulations meant to protect people from dirty air are also saving the birds of North America.
Brian E. Kushner / Ornithology Laboratory
Male finch of the house.
Improving air quality as part of a federal program to reduce ozone pollution may have prevented the loss of 1.5 billion birds over the past 40 years, the study found. Today it is nearly 20% of bird life in the United States.
The study, led by scientists from Cornell and the University of Oregon, was published November 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our research shows that the benefits of environmental regulation have likely been underestimated,” said co-lead author Ivan Rudik, assistant professor to Ruth and William Morgan at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. “Reducing pollution has positive impacts in unexpected places and provides additional political leverage for conservation efforts.”
Ozone, a naturally occurring gas, is also produced by human activities, including power plants and cars. An ozone layer in the upper atmosphere protects the Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. But tropospheric ozone is dangerous and is the main pollutant of smog.
To examine the relationship between bird abundance and air pollution, the researchers used models that combined bird observations from Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s eBird program with ground-level pollution data and existing regulations. They tracked monthly changes in bird abundance, air quality, and regulatory status for 3,214 U.S. counties over a 15-year period.
The team focused on a regulation called NOx (nitric oxide) Budget Trading Program, which was implemented by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to protect human health by limiting summer emissions of ozone precursors from large sources. industrial.
The findings suggest that ozone pollution is most harmful to small migratory birds – such as sparrows, fledglings, and finches – which make up 86 percent of all land bird species in North America. Ozone pollution directly harms birds by damaging their respiratory systems and indirectly damages their food sources.
“Not only can ozone cause direct physical harm to birds, it can also compromise plant health and reduce the number of insects that birds consume,” said study co-author Amanda Rodewald, Garvin Professor of Ornithology at the Department. of Natural Resources and the Environment in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
“Not surprisingly,” Rodewald said, “birds that cannot access high-quality habitats or food resources are less likely to survive or reproduce successfully. The good news here is that environmental policies aimed at protecting human health return. important benefits also to birds “.
Last year, a separate study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology showed that North American bird populations have declined by nearly 3 billion birds since 1970. This new study shows that without ozone-depleting regulations and efforts of the Clean Air Act, the loss of bird life may have been 1.5 billion more birds.
“This is the first large-scale evidence that ozone is associated with declining bird abundance in the United States and that life-saving regulations also bring significant conservation benefits to birds,” said co-author Catherine Kling. , professor of Tisch University. at Dyson School and Faculty Director at Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. “This work contributes to our growing understanding of the connection between environmental health and human health.”
Other lead co-authors were Yuanning Liang, PhD student in environmental, energy and resource economics; and Eric Zou, assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon. Alison Johnston, a researcher at the Lab of Ornithology, also contributed.
Pat Leonard is a staff writer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
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