Bird City's Urgent Goal

POWERFUL STORY

Imagine you wake up one morning, look out your back window and a Magnolia Warbler is visiting the  native trees and shrubs that you planted. 

Here's a bird bound for the boreal forest after  wintering in Guatemala and for one day it is dependent on your actions to help it get to its breeding ground and produce young. 

That's the powerful story behind Bird City Wisconsin.

 To encourage all communities in Wisconsin to implement sound bird conservation practices by offering public recognition to those that succeed in (a) enhancing the environment for birds and (b) educate the public about the interactions between birds and people and about the contributions birds make to a healthy community.
Rationale:
  • Birds are valuable indicators of the health of our environment, both locally and globally. The physiology of birds and humans is similar, and what threatens birds, can threaten us. Birds are sensitive barometers of the health of our environment.
  • Birds capture our imagination with their flight, their annual migrations, their antics at our bird feeders, and their beauty. Birds are enjoyed by many citizens (whether they are backyard birders" or tourists, serious wildlife enthusiasts, or people who are more casual observers).
  • Birds add much to a community's quality of life.   Enhancing the environment for resident and migrant bird populations benefits the quality of life of the human community as well.  People are connected to the natural world.
  • Birds can be negatively impacted by some kinds of economic development and technological innovation, and by accelerating urbanization that reduces, converts, and fragments native vegetation in communities of all sizes throughout Wisconsin.
  • Birds thrive in parks, backyards, and other vegetated spaces where they find food, water, and shelter. Only through education can the importance of these places be widely appreciated. Through promoting wise management of bird populations, Bird City Wisconsin can reduce threats to birds using our urban, suburban, and rural environments.
  • Bird populations will be enhanced
    by practices such as creating, protecting, and managing green space, landscaping with native plants in backyards and parks, adopting architecture and lighting systems that reduce collisions, and keeping cats indoors. Bird City Wisconsin seeks to facilitate the reduction of some of the many threats to a bird's survival that will make landscapes in all communities more hospitable to breeding, wintering, and migrating birds as they seek safe places to spend time and find food.
  • Populations of some species of both urban birds and birds of the countryside are declining due to shrinking habitats and lack of public attention to this decline. Bird City Wisconsin will help shine a spotlight on both migratory and resident species that are declining such as the Chimney Swift, Purple Martin, and Common Nighthawk. There are 19 warbler species and 10 sparrow species that are listed on the state's list of Species of Greatest Conservation Need; all of these declining species migrate through and over most of Wisconsin's communities. AND, the urgency is great because even some of our common bird species are slipping, gradually, almost unnoticed, into the ranks of scarcity, and the list of declining species is expanding every year.
   
Bird City Wisconsin - 1111 E. Brown Deer Road - Bayside, WI 53217 - Phone (414) 416-3272 - Email Us