Climate change and a river of raptors at Veracruz, Mexico
From the Editor -- June 2007
Published:
April 20, 2007
Last October, I had the great privilege of attending the fourth North American Ornithological Conference in Veracruz, Mexico. The organizers planned the meeting to coincide with the peak of autumn migration -- including the so-called river of raptors -- and their timing was perfect. I don't know when I will ever get to see another sky filled with as many wind-borne Wood Storks and Broad-winged Hawks.
The conference's scientific offerings were just as good. Keith Bildstein, director of conservation science at Hawk Mountain, painted a thrilling picture of hawks on the move around the world. Cuban ornithologists offered fascinating glimpses of birds on the most important forbidden island I know. And Auburn University ornithologist Geoffrey Hill presented evidence for the existence of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in Florida.
Not all the conference was rosy, of course. During a session devoted to climate and birds, for example, one researcher described the certain, catastrophic effects that rising sea levels will have on the Seaside Sparrow and other residents of our eastern tidal marshes. Another reported that changes in temperature and precipitation were already causing declines in the number of ducks overwintering in the southernmost states of the Mississippi Flyway and increases in the number wintering farther north.
He and other speakers sent me home thinking of birds as both victims and indicators of climate change, an idea that Susan Bonfield, program director of International Migratory Bird Day, develops on page 24 of this issue. They also made it clear that the notion of conserving biodiversity as it has existed in the past is fast becoming obsolete. From this day onward, all conservation planning must take climate change into account.
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