1/3 of songbirds in some national parks in decline, researcher says
Songbird population monitoring program takes ‘canary in the coal mine' approach
Songbirds can help bring our national parks to life, but a long-term monitoring program has found that some bird species are in trouble.
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It's a warning sign for the overall health of our parks, according to Derek Petersen, who assesses the health of songbirds for Banff, Yoho and Kootenay national parks.
"It's actually the 'canary in the coal mine' type of approach," he said.
"It gives us a snapshot generally of what's happening with species diversity and abundance for our forest songbirds across our national parks."
Early analysis shows that a third of the species that live in the areas under study are showing a decline.
The research on songbirds involves collecting data at about 475 sites within the parks in the montane and up to the treeline in the subalpine. At each site, bird recording hardware is used to capture bird-call songs, which are then sent for analysis.
From that information, researchers can find out how many species were at the site and what kinds. After that, they figure out trends.
One of the species that is threatened is the olive-sided flycatcher.
Tiny bird faces many challenges
"It covers an 8,000-kilometre migratory route from northern Canada down to South America to the Andes Mountains. So it's obviously subjected to a lot of different kinds of potential impacts on its wintering grounds … but also on its migratory route before arriving back in Canada," Petersen said.
That means the tiny bird has a lot to cope with in its winter home, as well as its journey back to its summer home in the parks — everything from climate change to changing habitat conditions to changes to its food supply, he says.
For instance, the flycatcher is an "aerial insectivore" so it relies heavily on flying insects to keep going.
"And we see that those flying insects are impacted by everything from chemicals and climate change to habitat conditions to weather variables. So it's potentially subjected to a lot of variables within the course of a year that could be impacting their population status," Petersen said.
It's not all bad news though, as some bird populations are actually seeing an increase in numbers.
"Birds are important. People take them a bit for granted on the landscape," Petersen said.
"They're our major terrestrial species within the parks, so they're very important to keep, and we will continue to monitor them and hopefully we can ensure that we can keep them on the landscape."