Hundreds of organizations across U.S. urge Congress to defend bird protection law

This week, 513 conservation groups and other organizations from all 50 states joined together to urge Congress to defend the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the most important bird conservation policy in the United States.

The act, which has protected North American birds for 100 years, is under attack in the Department of the Interior and in Congress, led by Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

“Killing birds is a poison policy for Congress and the Department of the Interior. Americans in all 50 states are rising up to support 100 years of bipartisan agreement to protect America’s birds from avoidable deaths,” said David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society.

“Under either Rep. Liz Cheney’s proposal or the Interior Department’s legal opinion, BP would have been completely off the hook for the one million birds that died in the Gulf after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Common sense says no one really wants that, and organizations representing millions of people are asking Congress to listen.”

In November 2017, Cheney moved to gut the MBTA with an amendment to H.R. 4239, a bill written to weaken environmental protections in order to facilitate oil and gas drilling.

In late December, the administration followed suit when the Office of the Solicitor within the Department of the Interior released an opinion saying it would no longer enforce the MBTA in cases of incidental bird deaths, effectively giving a blank check to industry to allow gruesome and preventable bird deaths.

The MBTA is one of the Audubon Society and the American conservation movement’s earliest victories and has protected millions if not billions of birds in its century-long history.

Congress passed the MBTA in 1918 in response to public outcry over the mass slaughter of birds, which threatened egrets and other species with extinction. The law prohibits killing or harming America’s birds except under certain conditions, including managed hunting seasons for game species.

Today, the law protects birds from 21st-century threats by bringing together industry, government and conservation organizations to implement best-management practices.

Commonsense solutions like covering oil pits and flagging transmission lines protect countless birds each year from otherwise needless deaths.

The organizations’ letter shows their members from across the country want to see this Congress build on the nation’s 100-year conservation ethic, which brought into being laws like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act and the establishment of national parks.

Wisconsin signers include:

Audubon Great Lakes

Facts and figures on industrial causes of bird mortality in the United States:

Power lines: Up to 64 million birds per year (Source: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0101565) Communication towers: Up to 7 million birds per year (Source: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0034025)

Oil waste pits: 500,000 to 1 million birds per year (Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16988870)

Oil spills: The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill is estimated to have killed more than 1 million birds (http://www.audubon.org/news/more-one-million-birds-died-during-deepwater-horizon-disaster)