Minnesota Hit Hard By Declining Bird Population

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — It used to be that taking a walk in the spring or summer in western Minnesota meant seeing — or more often, hearing — a western meadowlark, a medium-sized bird with a cheery, lilting song that's synonymous with the open spaces in the American West.

That's less the case than it used to be. Last month, a report published in Science put a number on the declining size of the United States' bird population.

It was big: down nearly 3 billion birds, or roughly a third of the birds present in the 1970s. The report, by researchers at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and several partnering organizations, affirmed something people who study birds have noticed at local and regional levels for decades.

Among the habitats most affected? Grasslands and boreal forests, habitat types that together cover more than half of Minnesota.

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