As the summer nears, many hummingbird species will migrate from the United States down south for the cold winter months. The migration has some species traveling up to 4,000 miles from Alaska to Mexico.
More than 191 hummingbird species from across the Americas are experiencing declining population trends, according to International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species. While population declines are unknown, migratory hummingbirds are especially vulnerable to habitat disturbance and climate change,” Western Hummingbird Partnership reported.
“Our detailed assessment of North American hummingbird species coupled with our validation analyses provide a critical framework in conservation science,” researchers with Environment and Climate Change Canada said. “Furthermore, the previously unreported declines of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds carry potentially important ecosystem-level consequences if left unaddressed, since this pollinator species alone fills its ecological niche in eastern North America.”
The Ruby-throated hummingbirds, which is home to eastern North America, have increased over the long-term, but faced declined by 17 percent from 2004 to 2019.
While 20 of the world’s 363 known hummingbird species are home to the U.S., according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a number of hazards and threats that have caused many hummingbird populations to decline include, climate change, wildfires, habitat degradation and loss, and exposure to toxins and nonnative predators, Holly Ernest, a UW professor emeritus of wildlife genomics and disease ecology, said.
“Climate change affects them in a number of ways that we know about and probably many more that we don’t,” Ernest says. “One example is a mismatch of migration timing with plant flowering that hummingbirds depend on. Another example is the effect of changing climate with invertebrate communities, including insects that hummingbirds need for their protein source.”
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