Here’s a quiz for the birdwatchers out there: Which country has experienced the greatest loss of bird species over the past quarter century? (And by “greatest loss,” I mean global extinctions). The answer is not Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, or some other developing country—it’s the United States. By my calculation, nine species of birds have vanished from the US since 1980 (see Wilcove, D.S. 2005. “Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.” Science 308: 1422-1423), by far the largest number of any nation during this time period. The majority of these extinctions—six out of nine—occurred in Hawaii. Indeed, our fiftieth state can justly be called the Extinction Capital of the World. At least half of Hawaii’s native land birds were extirpated by the early Polynesian settlers, who cleared the lowland forests, hunted the larger species, and introduced the first of what would eventually become an army of non-native species that prey upon or compete with the native species. And approximately half of the remaining species disappeared following the arrival of European settlers in the 19th century. The Europeans cleared still more of the forests and brought with them many more harmful invasive species, including mosquitoes that transmitted two deadly diseases-avian pox and avian malaria-to the native birds.

What is so troubling about the Hawaiian experience is that the losses continue to mount, notwithstanding all the agencies, laws, and regulations we have created to prevent these things from happening. The poouli, a dapper little songbird restricted to a small area of cloud forest in Maui, vanished in 2004. And within the past few years, populations of two more songbirds—the Kauai akepa and the Kauai creeper—appear to have crashed, raising the possibility that they, too, will become extinct in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, the birds are just the tip of the iceberg: hundreds of other Hawaiian species—from mammals to insects to vascular plants—teeter on the brink of extinction.

Sadly, the conservation of Hawaii’s amazing flora and fauna has been a relatively low priority for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency charged with safe-guarding the nation’s imperiled wildlife. Much more money has been spent on behalf of the mainland’s abundant ducks and geese or even its endangered species than has been devoted to Hawaii’s beleaguered species. And Hawaii’s Congressional delegation, which includes two of the most senior members of the U.S. Senate, has shown little interest in going to bat for the state’s wildlife.

Hawaii’s fauna and flora are unique precisely because the Hawaiian Islands are so remote and isolated. But that isolation appears to have worked against those species in another way: it has left far too many Americans unaware of the tidal wave of extinction that is sweeping over our fiftieth state.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

A reporter recently called me, asking what changes in environmental policy I hoped to see in an Obama Administration. I immediately thought of the specific issues that have troubled me over the past eight years: unregulated oil and gas exploration in the West, too few species protected under the Endangered Species Act, too many snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, the reckless quest to drill, baby, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, etc., etc. And then it struck me that there was something far more fundamental that President Obama needs to do. He needs to restore the authority and integrity of the scientific work done by federal agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the EPA, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

For nearly eight years, the Bush Administration has systematically suppressed, altered, or disowned scientific findings that conflicted with its predetermined opinions. For example, Julie MacDonald, a political appointee in the Interior Department with no training in ecology or wildlife biology, pressured Fish and Wildlife Service scientists to change their findings on whether certain species belonged on the endangered list or the amount of critical habitat other species needed to survive. In other cases, she sent confidential documents about endangered species to allies of the industries that would likely be affected by conservation measures in order to determine if the proposed measures were acceptable to those industries. This sort of unethical behavior has several unfortunate consequences: It drives good scientists out of the federal government; it causes people to lose faith in the integrity and authority of the agencies charged with protecting America’s natural resources; and it results in lots of litigation, which can paralyze the agencies.

In the long run, shoddy science is in no one’s best interest-not the public, not the regulated industries, not the environmental community, and most certainly not the nation’s natural resources. President Obama can do the nation (and the world) an immense favor by appointing people who understand that sound decisions cannot be made on the basis of unsound science.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

According to the New York Times, Jeffrey Scott Hawn, a wealthy software developer, recently pleaded guilty to one count of criminal mischief and one count of cruelty to animals for illegally killing 32 bison on his ranch in Colorado last winter. The bison apparently wandered onto Mr. Hawn’s property from an adjacent ranch, probably because a heavy snowfall caused them to go searching for forage. For his misdeed, Mr. Hawn will pay $157,000 in fines and restitution.

Ironically, last winter the State of Montana and the National Park Service sanctioned the killing of over 1,600 wild bison that committed the unpardonable crime of wandering outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park in search of forage. These bison, members of the only free-roaming, genetically-pure herd of bison left in the United States, were killed because the State of Montana is terrified they will spread brucellosis to livestock grazing on federal and private lands outside the park borders. Brucellosis can cause female cattle to abort their fetuses. Montana has gone to great lengths to eliminate brucellosis from its livestock, and because Montana’s cattle have been declared brucellosis-free, its ranchers are free to ship their animals out of state without first quarantining them (an expensive thing to do).

There has never been a documented case of a wild bison transmitting brucellosis to a cow, but the mere possibility that it could happen is enough to cause the State of Montana to insist on the death penalty for all bison that wander outside the park boundary (unless they can be chased back into the park…but try making a bison go where you want it to go). The Yellowstone bison are doing what bison in the Northern Rockies have been doing for thousands of years-migrating out of the high-elevation areas and into the low-elevation areas during harsh winters, when the snow becomes too deep for them to find food.

There is a less bloody solution to this problem: The federal government can refuse to allow livestock to graze on public lands adjacent to the park, and it can pay private landowners near the park to allow bison, not cattle, to graze on their property during the winter. But that solution is anathema to the ranching lobby and some politicians in Montana, so the slaughter continues. Let’s hope this winter is a mild one in Montana, so the bison don’t leave the park.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

Lately I’ve been paying more attention to the birds visiting my backyard feeder, and I’m sure I’m not the only one doing so. As the end of fall approaches, lots of birdwatchers in the northeastern United States begin to wonder whether the “winter finches” will appear. They’re thinking about several species of colorful finches that nest in the boreal forests of Canada and, every few years, head south in large numbers. Years can go by with scarcely more than a handful of evening grosbeaks, red crossbills, white-winged crossbills, or redpolls appearing in places like Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, and then suddenly, flocks of them will show up at backyard feeders throughout the Northeast, gorging on sunflower seeds and other treats. It’s enough to brighten even the bleakest winter day. Earlier this fall, observers in Canada were reporting a major southward movement of white-winged crossbills, raising the hopes of birdwatchers in the US, but thus far, very few crossbills have crossed the border.

Ornithologists have correlated these southward “irruptions” with the abundance of the cone crops of various northern trees. White-winged crossbills, for example, feed extensively on the seeds inside the cones of spruces and hemlocks (indeed, their oddly shaped bills are designed to extract those seeds). In the autumn, if the cone crop is small, or if the cones have shed their seeds due to unusually warm, dry weather, the crossbills will abandon their northern haunts and head south. The related red crossbill specializes on the seeds of pines; it too will head south if the pine cone crop is inadequate. Redpolls are particularly fond of birch seeds and are thought to migrate in response to fluctuations of that food resource.

My personal favorite is the evening grosbeak, a magnificent golden-yellow bird that reminds me of a goldfinch on steroids. It likes the seeds of maples, box alders, ashes, cherries, and pines. Once largely restricted to the western United States, it expanded its breeding range into eastern Canada and northern New England about a century ago. As recently as 30-40 years ago, large flocks visited the northeastern and central Atlantic states every winter. But something mysterious has happened to the grosbeak population, for the species has virtually disappeared as a winter visitor to my part of the world. When three individuals turned up at a wildlife sanctuary near Princeton last winter, birdwatchers from throughout New Jersey flocked to see them.

Although none of the winter finches appears to be in danger of extinction, they do pose an interesting conservation dilemma: How do you protect species that have no regular migratory season or pathway, species that appear to wander for hundreds of miles? No one knows. In the meantime, we birdwatchers keep our fingers crossed that they will appear in our backyards this winter…and we will wish them a safe journey back to the boreal forest when spring arrives.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

Scientists tend to distrust conclusions that are not based on empirical data and adequate sample sizes. So take what I’m about to say with a large grain of salt, since it is neither empirical nor based on sufficient data.

The issue of sustainability is arguably the greatest challenge of our time. How do we provide for 6.7 billion people (rising to over 9 billion by mid-century) without inflicting irreparable harm to our environment? Having recently returned from a trip to Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, I was struck by the fact that Europe–or at least the small part of it that I saw–seems much closer to addressing this issue than the United States. For example, there was a noticeable absence of sprawl in all three countries. Cites and towns were tightly clustered and surrounded by a larger landscape of farms and forests. Strip malls, shopping centers, and classic suburban housing developments were few and far between; “McMansions” were virtually non-existent. The towns were linked together by reliable, clean trains, while the cities featured safe, efficient, public transportation systems of buses and trolleys. (Indeed, the contrast with Amtrak or New Jersey Transit’s overpriced and unreliable trains was glaring). I did not spend much time on the farms, but I was struck by their smaller size and greater diversity of crops compared to their American counterparts. (Of course, one would need to know a lot more about comparative subsidies, market prices, pesticide and fertilizer usage, and other factors before reaching any firm conclusions).

No one would argue that Western Europe has actually achieved the elusive goal of sustainability. I doubt, for example, that any of the countries I visited could maintain its current standard of living indefinitely if forced to rely on the natural resources (including farmland) within its borders. And all of these nations are net emitters of greenhouse gases, thereby contributing to global warming. But I do think we in the United States could learn a lot from our European colleagues. They seem to have figured out how to have a high standard of living at significantly less cost to the earth.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.

In late September, there are few places in North America where I would rather be than Cape May, New Jersey, arguably the best place on the continent to watch migrating birds in the autumn. But I’m in Europe now, not North America, and this past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Cape May of Scandinavia, a place called Falsterbo. Located in southwestern Sweden, Falsterbo is a thin peninsula that juts into the ocean. In the fall, vast numbers of birds migrating south from northern Sweden, Finland, and even Russia funnel into the peninsula and pile up before crossing the small stretch of ocean separating Falsterbo from nearby Denmark. My host was Professor Thomas Alerstam, a professor at Lund University and one of the world’s foremost authorities on avian migration.

Standing at the tip of the peninsula, I was astonished at the number and diversity of migrating birds. Thousands of chaffinches and bramblings passed overhead, along with flocks of wood pigeons, blue tits (a type of chickadee), and jackdaws. They were joined by a steady stream of meadow pipits, siskins, barn swallows, and other species. As the sun warmed the land, creating invisible thermals, the raptors began to move, too: sparrow hawks, common buzzards, Eurasian kestrels, and red kites, along with the occasional hobby or merlin (two species of falcon).

Not having much field experience with European birds, I found myself struggling to identify the fast-moving birds; Thomas and his students, on the other hand, called out the names of the various species based on their call notes and silhouettes-cues that I, as a novice, did not know.

As I watched the spectacle, I was struck by the fact that throughout the northern hemisphere, from Siberia to Sweden to the United States, birds were on the move-billions and billions of birds engaged in a timeless ritual.

By the afternoon, I was tired and thrilled. I asked several of my Swedish colleagues how the day’s migration ranked relative to their other visits to Falsterbo. “Poor.” “Mediocre.” “I wish you could have seen this place on a good day,” they replied. I guess it all depends on your perspective. What a “good” day at Falsterbo must be like is beyond my imagination.

What do you think? Leave us a comment.

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David Wilcove is professor of ecology, evolutionary biology, and public affairs at Princeton University and one of the world’s leading experts on endangered species. He is the author of No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations.