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opinion

Jeff Wells is science advisor for Pew Charitable Trusts and science and policy director of the Boreal Songbird Initiative

Many people know the tragic story of the Passenger Pigeon – a species that once numbered in the billions and darkened the skies on its migrations. That was before massive overharvesting finally ended the species' time on Earth. The last one died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

That was just two years before what some consider the world's first major environmentally focused treaty was signed – the Migratory Bird Convention between the U.S. and Canada. That treaty and the enabling legislation that followed in each country put an end to unregulated market hunting in the two nations and allowed many bird populations to rebound.

But not all bird species made their way back from the brink.

Take the Bachman's Warbler. A tiny yellow bird with a black throat and cap, there are only three audio recordings of its song in existence. Sadly the bird disappeared before it was ever really studied in detail.

Its exact winter and summer range, migratory pathways and habitat preferences have been the subject of much debate and conjecture over the years. The few sightings after 1950 were presumably the last surviving individuals of a species in its last gasp before extinction erased them from life's lineage.

This year we celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the Migratory Bird Convention.

But as we move into the next 100 years, the fate of the Bachman's Warbler is a reminder that we need to do more to ensure that no more of our birds follow the downward trajectory to extinction.

Today we have incredible new technologies that allow researchers to answer the kinds of fundamental questions about birds that we never had the opportunity to learn about the Bachman's Warbler. Tiny satellite transmitters and geolocators show the movements of birds from the Boreal Forest of Canada and Alaska through the U.S. to northern South America and beyond, isotopic and DNA markers derived from feathers and claws of wintering birds show their breeding origins, and modern computing power allows vast amounts of citizen science, radar, and acoustic monitoring data to be crunched to provide new insights into bird migration.

The most telling finding from the explosion of new bird migration research is that birds are reliant on a vast array of areas during breeding, migration, and wintering seasons and the benchmarks for habitat protection must be raised to an entirely new level. Many scientists, including most recently E.O. Wilson in his book Half Earth, have now recognized this new reality and are recommending vastly higher levels of habitat protection. Over 1,500 scientists support the Canadian Boreal Forest Conservation Framework, a visionary plan to conserve at least half of North America's boreal forest. The Boreal Birds Need Half Initiative, inspired by the Framework, calls for at least 50 per cent protection of North America's Boreal Forest to protect the habitat of billions of nesting birds that migrate south each fall to populate ecosystems from the U.S. south to Argentina and Chile.

Federal, provincial, territorial, state, indigenous, and local governments in Canada and the U.S. should publically embrace the new reality. They need to increase levels of habitat protection at all scales, vastly increase budgets for support of indigenous communities engaged in land use planning and management including for support of indigenous-led training, increase funding for bird migration research and conservation, and encourage collaboration between Indigenous governments and research institutions for bird migration research.

It is heartbreaking to listen to sound recordings of the last known Bachman's Warbler, singing exuberantly to attract a female that probably never came. The research and conservation tools and opportunities did not exist early enough to help prevent its extinction.

Today, they do.

Let's use these tools so our grandchildren don't have to listen to the last recorded sounds of threatened birds like the Canada Warbler or Rusty Blackbird, but instead can step outside and see and hear them for themselves.

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