There's a reason that we speak of "the canary in the coal mine." Birds have a way of indicating early that there are problems in the environment.
The spotted owl and marbled murrelet and their connections to old-growth forests provide more recent examples. As birds go, so go the rest of us critters, potentially. And more than half of bird species in the United States are declining in numbers, as revealed in the latest State of the Birds report, the first since 2019.
Ashland-based Klamath Bird Observatory plays a role in the collection and use of the bird data in the report, and KBO Executive Director John Alexander visits with news of the overall picture... and some hopeful trends.