By Emma Eicher, WORLD (5/26/2026)
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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, May 26th.
Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.
Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.
Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a bird decline.
Birding is a popular pastime for many Americans, but there are far fewer birds these days to watch.
Thousands of species across North America continue to decline—and conservationists are rethinking how to bring them back.
REICHARD: WORLD’s Emma Eicher took a walk with an Audubon Society educator in Western Pennsylvania and has the story.
SOUND: [Red winged black bird chirps, warbler chirps]
EMMA EICHER: Chris Kubiak is armed with binoculars in his jacket pocket.
CHRIS KUBIAK: That’s your northern parula, that’s a really cool looking warbler …
But he doesn’t use them. Instead, he bends his head and listens.
SOUND: [Bird chirps]
KUBIAK: See, right next to our left here, there’s a hooded warbler that’s making a loud chirp note back there.
Kubiak doesn’t have to see a bird to believe it’s there. He’s encountered about three to four thousand bird species over his lifetime … and now he mainly birds by ear, identifying them through sound alone.
KUBIAK: I’m better with bird language than human language, so I don’t know why that is, but that is the case. [Chuckles]
SOUND: [Bird song]
KUBIAK: So there’s a bird behind us that just sang, called a Tennessee warbler …
Birding is the act of watching—or in Kubiak’s case, more often listening—and appreciating birds. It’s one of the fastest-growing hobbies in the world. It grew significantly during the pandemic—when bored quarantiners set up feeders in their own backyard. Bird outings and related expenditures contribute about $279 billion to the economy each year.
The recent surge in avian enthusiasm coincided with a crisis event: in 2019, Science Magazine published a study that revealed a devastating population decline in North America. Since the ’70s, nearly 3 billion breeding adults have disappeared across more than 500 species—ranging from house sparrows to the red-winged blackbird.
BRANDT RYDER: I think it was eye opening for a lot of folks …
Brandt Ryder is a conservation scientist at the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. He says the decline was the result of several factors, like habitat loss and pesticide use.
But the biggest culprit? Domestic and feral cats, which kill up to 4 billion birds every year in the U.S. alone.
Conservationists had known about bird population decline for decades, but this new study showed their efforts to reverse it just weren’t working. And it brought the problem to the forefront of the public.
RYDER: From my perspective, bird conservation is at a bit of a crossroads.
Ryder says the research forced a reckoning.
RYDER: I think we have faced a bit of a paradigm shift in bird conservation, and tried to have this inward look and ask this question, you know, are the things that we’re doing, are they working, or do we need to do something different?
So, conservationists have been blazing new trails. One new strategy is an old one: to keep encouraging people to care more about the birds, and maybe keep their cats indoors.
A lot of people have responded to the call.
RYDER: There is a general appetite out there in the public for doing things that are beneficial to both just them, not just themselves, but also for the greater good of the planet.
And with birding on the rise, there’s renewed interest in so-called “backyard education.” In these programs, homeowners are encouraged to plant native wildflowers to attract birds and other native animals.
Ryder says his conservancy programs rely on volunteers, hired help, and birders. One activity is called eBird, where birders digitally log species they’ve encountered.
RYDER: Normal bird watchers, anyone out there bird watching, can create an eBird checklist, and that data is now being compiled and can be again used to track what’s happening for the status and trends of these populations through time.
Species often face unique problems, from environmental destruction to pesticide poisoning and they require specific solutions.
For example, some grassland birds in the Rockies face habitat loss, so Ryder’s conservancy is replanting native grasses.
On the other hand, some birds are actually adapting to the changing environment, like the Baltimore Oriole. Here’s Kubiak again.
KUBIAK: Historically, they’ve been very closely tied to elm trees. We’ve lost a lot of our mature elms through Dutch elm disease, and there was a worry that they wouldn’t adapt. But they’ve adapted just fine. Every year we’re seeing that their numbers are increasing.
For Kubiak, his job at the Audubon Society doubles as an educational opportunity and a reminder that humans aren’t separate from nature.
KUBIAK: I think humans need to re-remember that we’re part of nature, we’re part of the ecosystem, and this is how I connect to the natural world. But I think there’s just, even if you don’t want to be a bird nerd like myself, which I am, there’s all sorts of great ways to connect to nature through birds.
Bird populations are still declining in North America. The 2025 U.S. State of the Birds report shows grassland birds have experienced the steepest losses.
Science lays out practical rescue efforts for the future, challenging ordinary people to remember what stewardship of the earth really means.
Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Western Pennsylvania.
