How changes to U.S. bird protections law could impact N.W.T. species

The U.S. government recently signalled it will be narrowing its interpretation of the U.S. law protecting migratory birds, and Canadian advocates are concerned the effects could be felt on both sides of the border.
It comes at a time when many migratory bird species, including some which spend time in N.W.T. and in other territories, are in decline.
David Browne is the head of policy for conservation and advocacy organization Birds Canada. He spoke with Hilary Bird, host of CBC's Trailbreaker, about why he is concerned about what he is seeing in the U.S. right now.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is happening to the legislation that protects migratory birds right now?
The act prevents the killing of birds, and what the president has indicated is that they don't intend to enforce this prohibition on the killing of birds for things that are unintentional.
So that's things like buildings that kill birds, wind turbines, tailings ponds, these types of activities that aren't intended to kill birds that do. They are signalling they're not going to enforce the act on those things, so that leaves a huge gap in protection obviously.
Why does the U.S. want to make that change?
The motivation that was given in the notice was for economic development, and to unleash the U.S. economy and grow primarily resource development in oil and gas. They see it as a barrier, and they want to get that barrier out of the way.
Do we know how often birds are unintentionally killed by things like oil and gas development in the U.S.?
I want to just mention a bit of the history here — and in N.W.T. you would know about this from management of caribou — a lot of animals move between our borders. They don't stop at the border, they keep going. So we have treaties for things like salmon fisheries, Great Lakes fisheries, caribou, whales.
Birds are actually the first thing that we had a treaty for in North America, and in fact in the world. That was initially to prevent commercial hunting, but now one of the main things killing birds is not hunting. It's actually buildings, vehicles, wind turbines, these kinds of things. And the numbers are huge. So buildings in the US alone are estimated to kill about 600 million birds a year. Vehicles kill about 200 million, power lines about 28 million.
And we're not going to start taking down buildings, that's not what the law is intended to do, but it's the backstop. Really what happens with that law is people put in place best practices for buildings, for power lines, for wind turbines. But without the law, there's not that incentive to get the best practice in place and to make it work.
Okay, so it's not exactly that they're handing out all these fines or anything like that. It's more that it's an incentive for companies to try and protect birds?
In some cases, what they're proposing to do is against the law and they get fined. But in most cases, they try to avoid these impacts.
And for Northwest Territories, which is really like a nursery ground for many of our migratory birds, millions of them, it affects those birds when they move down South to their overwinter ground.
So right now, everybody in N.W.T. is excited about the birds coming back, but what happens there is as those birds go South again in the fall, they run this gauntlet of sources of mortality, of ways of dying on their way South, and they don't come back.
David, can can you tell us, how does the impact of industry on migratory birds compare to other pressures the population is facing such as climate change?
It's hard to pick apart which thing is causing declines. We know that many types of birds are in steep decline, and so many of our long distance migrants are in decline. Our grassland birds, our birds that eat insects, are in decline.
And so some of the other big, big threats are climate change, loss of habitat down in South and Central America, loss of habitat in Canada, and other things. Poisoning through pesticides can be a threat to particular birds.
So there's sort of a suite of threats to these animals, in particular loss of habitat and the changing climate that they're trying to adapt to. And this is an additional cause of concern, these accidental, unintentional killing of hundreds of millions of birds through these different means.
David, we've recently heard politicians here in this country talking about building up, you know, domestic energy sectors, fast tracking the process. Is there a risk at all of our legislation following suit?
I don't see people moving to change our Migratory Bird Convention Act. In fact, I see the opposite, where Canada's law is pretty clear, it's well enforced, it works fairly well and we're not right now looking to change it.
The concern here is, what are the Americans going to do? We have a treaty that talks about protecting these birds together. And when the U.S. changes its interpretation of the law and says it's not going to enforce this accidental killing, it makes us wonder, OK, what are the Americans going to do? How are they going to meet their commitment under this treaty to protect birds together?
David, if the U.S. doesn't bring back these protections, bird watchers here in the Northwest Territories and throughout the North, what do you think they could expect to see?
Well, there's a few things. We could see industry move to not taking into account the death of birds on what they're doing. There's other pressure on industry to not be killing birds so, you know, maybe some [companies] would just take it upon themselves.
But, you know, ultimately, I would be concerned that it's not going to be addressed. Birds will continue to be killed. Best practices won't be put in place, and we're going to have more deaths and more declines, particularly of these wonderful birds and the songbirds that are coming back to N.W.T. right now.

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