Four years ago Game and Fish Magazine named our area as a November hunting hotspot… “where the ruffed grouse still reigns as the king of game birds.”
Hunters, birders, and the grouse themselves had better enjoy it while they can. In the time between 2000 and 2020 scientists are seeing our area degrade as a suitable winter range for the ruffed grouse. By 2050 it will be marginal at best, and by 2080 the explosive flutter of the grouse will be something old people tell their grandchildren about. Hunting’s a big sector of our local economy, but grouse won’t be part of it.
The National Audubon Society has completed a massive seven-year study examining a century of bird and climate records, and working up our best understanding of future trends. One of the things they’ve found is a disaster for the ruffed grouse. It will probably lose over half of its current range because the climate will make it unsuitable – without having anyplace to go.
Ducks Unlimited recently enthused about the vast flocks of black ducks, mallards, and pintails at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. Our region still looks pretty good for mallards (they’re very adaptable) and pintails by 2080. But black ducks would find it hard to hold on in those winters.
It’s not just game birds, either. By 2080 our area will no longer be suitable summer range for the bobolink, that lovely songbird, celebrated by Thoreau, whose flocks I’ve found on country lanes in Urbana, Bath, and Tuscarora. Gone as well will be the ovenbird, with its teacher-teacher-teacher call in the woods. Scarlet tanagers will not come to our feeders. Common mergansers who come here will be teetering right on the edge of their range.
We have already seen changes wrought in the wildlife by the warming of the world. In the early 1970s cardinals were an uncommon sight in my home town of Hope Valley, Rhode Island. They were unseen 35 miles north, where I went to college in Providence. Now they’re common sights at our winter feeders here, even farther north. It used to be that the cardinal and the mockingbird greeted you when you crossed the Mason-Dixon Line.
There are 588 native species of birds in North America. The Audubon study projects that over the next 66 years 314 will be in serious trouble because of the climate. From that group 188 species will lose more than half of their range, though with potential to gain some territory elsewhere (climate-threatened). The other 126 will suffer a net loss of over 50% (climate-endangered).
Of course, that’s ONLY looking at climate. The fact that a new range may be climate-suitable does NOT mean that it has the right food, or suitable nesting sites. And it does NOT take into account competition with other species who may also be crowding into the lifeboat.
It also does NOT take into account other changes to the range. For instance, right here in our area, look at the space south of Mossy Bank, Spencer Hill, and Harris Hill, running across the state line into Pennsylvania. It’s a high, heavily-wooded plateau, and might be suitable for any number of woodland species under new climate conditions.
BUT… what if, over the next 66 years, large sections of that forest become housing developments? What if it’s checkerboarded by gas drilling operations? What if there’s a major forest fire? What if there’s extensive lumbering?
In those cases, all the suitable climate in the world won’t matter to those woodland species. And stuff like that WILL happen over 66 years – maybe here, maybe elsewhere, maybe both.
For all our long history as human beings, we’ve had a very successful response whenever we’ve used an area past its limits: move. That worked, more or less, when OUR range and our population were small – there was always plenty more space. That doesn’t work any more. There’s noplace left to go. Our trash has caught up to us. It might be invisible, but it’s there in the air we breathe. We’ll watch the results, right outside our windows, and tell our grandkids about the birds we used to have.