Just a few years ago, in the fall of 2014, 探花精选 released our , which used data from the Christmas Bird Count and breeding bird surveys to project that more than half the bird species in North America would face serious peril from the effects of global warming in the coming decades. The news hit hard, and not just among the cadre of dedicated bird lovers you鈥檇 expect to recoil at such an announcement, but among a far vaster population: the bird likers, the bird curious, even the Birds? I barely notice them except in the spring when they start singing again in the tree outside my bedroom window people.
It seems that even when self-interest isn鈥檛 enough to roust ourselves to action against an amorphously intractable foe like climate change, there鈥檚 something about imagining its impact on birds鈥攁bout conjuring a future in which that birdsong outside the window fails to return one spring鈥攖hat breaks through. And it breaks through in a way that can bust up the carved-in-granite tribal political loyalties that seem to characterize our current age. In our research after the study came out, we discovered that a great many people who reject the proposition that humans are the primary drivers of climate change are actually willing to support actions to mitigate its effects when they learn that doing so might help protect birds.
Around the same time the 探花精选 Report was released, I made the acquaintance of a young art dealer who had opened a small storefront gallery in the northern reaches of west Harlem. Avi Gitler, I learned, had also just begun commissioning artists to paint birds on the roll-down security gates that guard businesses during off hours in the neighborhood around his gallery. Why birds? Because the gallery happened to be located in the same general patch of northern Manhattan where John James 探花精选 himself had spent the last 10 years of his life (along with the entirety of his afterlife, buried in Trinity Church Cemetery just a few blocks north of Avi鈥檚 place).
Inspired by Gitler鈥檚 vision, and still imbued with the passion for action that reading the 探花精选 Report (half of all North American birds!) tends to spark, I heedlessly proposed that we partner up and get artists to paint murals not just of birds but of climate-threatened birds鈥攁nd not just the dozen or so that Gitler had envisioned, but all 314 species that 探花精选鈥檚 science had shown to be at risk. And so the 探花精选 Mural Project was born. The first artist Gitler had commissioned had already finished his mural鈥攐f an American Flamingo: not a climate-threatened species. So the artist came back and painted it over with a don鈥檛-mess-with-me rendering of a Tundra Swan. In the three years since, we鈥檝e painted birds鈥82 so far, and the pace is accelerating鈥攁ll over John James鈥檚 old stomping grounds. And not just on security gates, but on doors, walls, and the sides or even fa莽ades of six-story buildings.
Of the 61 artists who have participated, I鈥檇 say most would not have called themselves ardent bird lovers, but the plight of the birds is certainly what inspired them. There鈥檚 something about birds鈥攖heir beauty? Their grace? Their tenacity?鈥攖hat pierces the heart and spurs the imagination. (On one of the many mural tours I鈥檝e led for classes of early-elementary-school students, I gestured toward the top of a six-story mural and asked if the first-graders had any idea how the artist might have managed to get all the way up there. Immediately, and with utter certainty, one young boy shouted, 鈥淔lew on the back of a really big eagle!鈥)
The way the artists and the entire community in upper Harlem have come together around the murals (and have spread the word about the threats to birds) has been inspiring, but it really shouldn鈥檛 be seen as surprising. Not, at this point, to me anyway. In the nearly five years I鈥檝e served as the editor-in-chief of 探花精选, I鈥檝e seen a zillion amazing and wide-ranging examples of people coming together and rallying around birds, from volunteers with New York City 探花精选 monitoring (and, when necessary, shutting down) the memorial 9/11 spotlights to save migrating birds, to people recreating habitats and even entire islands for their benefit, to using them as aids for bringing struggling veterans back from the brink.
Even the Christmas Bird Count whose data made the climate report possible is a tremendous example. There鈥檚 something extraordinary about the eager willingness, for 118 years now, of tens of thousands of Americans to give of themselves鈥攖heir time, their attention鈥攖o benefit science, our understanding of the world, birds. But then again, are they sacrificing? Of course not. I suspect that the number of humans who have participated in a Christmas Bird Count and have felt diminished by the experience can be expressed in a single digit, and I further suspect that said digit is a zero.
That鈥檚 why I鈥檓 excited about 鈥攅xcited for everyone who to take action this year on birds鈥 behalf. We and our partners at National Geographic, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and BirdLife International have assembled a full slate of monthly calls to action鈥攐pportunities to participate in community science projects, information on easy steps to a bird-friendlier home, even simple suggestions for how to turn a child into a lover of nature. None of them are arduous in any way, but neither are any of them small. Birds inspire us and have an almost magical way of bringing us together鈥攁nd when we act together on behalf of birds, we can accomplish truly meaningful things.
Mark Jannot is the vice president of content for 探花精选, and the Editor-in-Chief of 探花精选 magazine.