(Note: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom platform technology, due to social-distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.)
At 7:00 pm, President Ken Chaya called the meeting of the Society to order. After introducing himself and thanking the attendees for joining the meeting, he shared news of a few recent, notable bird sightings throughout New York City. He also announced that there were currently 65 people in the meeting and that more were joining as he spoke.
Before proceeding with the business portion of the meeting, President Chaya extended condolences on behalf of the Society to the family of long-time member and distinguished ecologist Thomas Lovejoy, who died on December 25, 2021. He also extended condolences to the family and friends of Mickey Maxwell Cohen, who, while not an LSNY member, was the recipient of the Society’s 2012 Natural History Service Award and was a frequent trip leader for many organizations. Mickey died on December 28.
Commencing with the business portion of the meeting, President Chaya, announced the result of an online vote to approve the minutes of the November members’ meeting: it passed with 152 votes of approval, none of disapproval, and one abstention.
He then announced the result of an online vote to approve new members. It passed with 151 votes of approval, none of disapproval, and two abstentions. President Chaya welcomed the following five individuals as new members:
- Cathy Weiner, Active Member, sponsored by Jean Shum
- Maureen Heard-Ryan, Active Member, sponsored by Debbie Mullins
- Stephen Klein , Active Member, sponsored by Patricia Klein
- Ric Cohn, Active Member, sponsored by Sanford Sorkin
- Amanda Storti. Active Member, sponsored by Janet Storti
President Chaya then invited non-members in attendance to join the Society, explaining that they could learn how to do so by visiting the LSNY website, www.linnaeannewyork.org. He also pointed out that he or any of the other LSNY officers listed on the website would be willing to sponsor anyone who would like to join, emphasizing that an organization is only as healthy as its growing and diverse membership. He declared that the LSNY welcomes all to become members regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, background, ability, or geographic location.
As the final item of business, President Chaya announced that due to the ongoing spread of Covid-19, the LSNY board has decided to hold the organization’s 144th annual meeting online rather than in person. The meeting will take place at 7 pm on Tuesday, March 8.
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At 7:12 pm, President Chaya introduced the evening’s speaker, Jason Hill, Ph.D., who presented “Altitudinal and Latitudinal Movement in Montane Birds,” about his current study of the effects of climate change on breeding bird populations in high-elevation locations of the northeastern US. (Michiel Oversteegen, who was originally scheduled to speak at this meeting, had to cancel due to an emergency.)
A quantitative ecologist and ornithologist by training—as well as a life-long birder and naturalist—Jason joined the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) in January of 2015, and currently helps to oversee a citizen science project, Mountain Birdwatch, while doing research into montane ecology. He followed graduation from the University of Montana (a B.S. in wildlife biology) with a series of wildlife-based adventures that found him monitoring sea otters in California, tracking endangered Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in Florida, and researching House Wrens at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. On Maui, his crew was tasked with capturing the three remaining po’ouli: a Hawaiian honeycreeper that is now thought to be extinct.
Jason investigated the post-fledgling ecology of Saltmarsh Sparrows at the University of Connecticut for his M.S. in Ecology and completed his Ph.D. with the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Penn State University, studying the population ecology of grassland sparrows following experimental landscape manipulation. During a cooperative post-doc between the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, he estimated the effects of landscape changes from Marcellus natural gas development on the populations of interior forest and grassland bird species.
At the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Jason primarily investigates avian ecology within the montane spruce-fir community.
Climate change is causing mountains to warm twice as fast as the rest of the world, and mountaintops at perhaps five times the global rate. Distributions of many montane plant and animal species are already shifting poleward and to higher elevations; data suggest that this rate of movement is increasing for some species (e.g., the American Pika, Ochotona princeps). In the northeastern US, models predict that the tree that makes up more than 50% of the Piceaspp.forest—balsam fir (Abies balsamea)—will be lost due to the upslope movement of hardwoods over the next two centuries. Unsurprisingly, species distribution models in conjunction with forecasts of climate change predict that most of the existing breeding-bird species of the spruce-fir zone will be absent as breeders from the northeastern US by the end of this century. Jason used ten years of community science data from more than 700 high-elevation sampling locations of the Mountain Birdwatch program to model the rate of elevational and latitudinal shifts in breeding-bird species of the northeastern US, including Bicknell’s Thrush (Catharus bicknelli), Blackpoll Warbler (Setophaga striata), and White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). Elevation-specific population trends and population trajectories were calculated using data from both the southern (i.e., the Catskill Mountains of New York) and northern peripheries of the breeding ranges for these species.
Jason began his presentation by saying that saltmarshes and mountains have a lot in common, and then spoke a bit about his earlier work in saltmarshes studying the Saltmarsh Sparrow. He said that in the Northeast, saltmarshes exist only along a very narrow strip on the North Atlantic coast. Saltmarsh Sparrows are ground nesters in these saltmarsh grasslands. Females build their nests on the ground and when the tide comes in, the young instinctively know to cling to the edge of the nest if a few centimeters of water invade the nest. However, every 28 days, a new moon brings an exceptionally high tide to the saltmarshes. Saltmarsh Sparrows time their nesting around these new moon tides. If/when other high tides occur in between the new moons, there isn’t enough time for the birds to nest and fledge their young.
Because of the presence of Highway 1 along the coast, saltmarshes cannot expand away from the ocean, and the nesting sparrows are left with no alternative nesting sites as waters rise due to climate change. Jason discussed how he had gathered data and built models to project when these sparrow populations would become globally extinct. They are currently declining at a rate of about 9% annually and have declined by 70% since the 1990s. According to his models, in forty years, the water level will be too high for the sparrows to nest. He speculated that the Saltmarsh Sparrow may be the first species extinction that can be directly attributed to climate change.
Turning to his research in the mountains, he pointed out that saltmarshes and mountains are similar in that both habitats are limited in their capacity to expand. Just as saltmarshes can’t expand inland in the face of climate change, mountains cannot grow taller.
Although we don’t yet know the reason, it’s been established that mountain tops are warming at a faster rate than lower elevations. While mountains cannot expand in response to climate change, the species found there have a number of options for adapting (i.e., changes in morphology, behavior, and/or distribution).
Focusing on changes in distribution, he used the example of the North American Pika, found in the mountains of western North America, usually in boulder fields at or above the tree line. As pikas have been studied for many years, there is quite a bit of data looking at the minimum elevation at which they exist. Records show that pikas have moved higher over time—almost 100 meters higher in just the last decade. Jason posited that this is true of many other species as well, but we simply don’t have the historical data necessary for comparison. He noted, however, that 85% of the mountain peaks in Europe are being colonized at higher levels by lower-level plants. This same pattern has been observed in mountains on every continent. The average for all organisms is an increase of eleven meters upslope each decade.
Data currently indicate a likely three-to-eight-degrees mean temperature change by the end of this century. Jason said that vegetation in the northeastern US is already responding to climate change. He showed a map indicating how the majority of North American tree species have moved northward and westward over the past 40 years. As mean temperatures increased, birds in 2005 were spending winter farther north than they were in 1966. That said, not every species is able to shift in this way; some birds and other animals may require aspects of a particular habitat that are not available elsewhere. As climate change increases, these species may end up fighting for survival. Some species adapt and others cannot, telling us that there can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach to climate change.
Jason predicted that over the next 300 years, we will likely see a 50% reduction in the spruce and fir trees of sub-alpine forests. We will also likely lose many of the animal species that rely on the unique habitat they provide. Thanks to over a century of Audubon’s Christmas Bird Counts, we have a great deal of historical data for birds, but we don’t have similar data for the mammals, fish, amphibians, insects, etc., that birds interact with in this shared habitat.
Sharing data on the Blue-headed Vireo, Canada Jay and Boreal Chickadee from the National Audubon Society’s “Survival By Degrees” report (https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees), Jason showed maps indicating the areas that would lose these species with a drop in mean temperature of only two degrees. He went on to say that in such a scenario, the state of New York is likely to lose forty breeding bird species. New Yorkers will also see more of species that are not currently common breeders here; these will likely become common breeders here by the end of the century if climate change continues. He predicted that all the boreal forest birds of New York will likely be gone from the state by the end of this century.
Jason pointed out that current models are built on climate alone; they don’t consider the impact of how birds interact with competitors, predators, etc. At present, science simply doesn’t have the data needed to add those relationships into the models, and even if it did, our models aren’t yet sophisticated enough to fully incorporate their impact. Further, we do not have the attention span or financial resources to actively manage every threatened species in the way we have been able to for species such as Bald Eagle and Osprey.
Jason said that what we need is on-the-ground calibration of these models, as there is so much we don’t yet know. He then introduced the work of Mountain Birdwatch (www.mountainbirdwatch.org). For the last decade, over 100 volunteer community scientists have been sampling almost 30,000 points at high elevation sites in the Northeast every June. He incorporated all the data collected from 2011 to 2020 into his analysis to avoid an exceptional year skewing the results. These models estimate local abundance and account for imperfect counts. One of his methods is to determine the point of elevation at which 50% of a given species is above and 50% is below. He can then compare year vs. year.
He shared some of the results of models that show the density of specific species at various elevations over time. As an example, the Yellow-bellied Flycatcher has declined significantly over the last decade. During this time, it has shifted upslope substantially, while also making a modest latitudinal shift. After showing results for several different species, some moving significantly upslope and others making significant latitudinal shifts, he pointed out that Black-capped Chickadees are doing something entirely different: they are increasing in the eastern US—at every elevation—at a rate of about 11% per year. Black-capped Chickadees are classified as “generalists,” and generalist species appear to be responding better to climate change than specialists. The species that are declining most quickly are the ones that are moving upslope most quickly, suggesting the possibility that they are the most sensitive to climate change.
He noted that almost all species in the study are declining, pointing out that in New York and Vermont, we are at the southern periphery of the breeding grounds of some of these species. Thus, it appears that some species are moving north, but it may simply be that their southern-most populations are shrinking. He cited Bicknell’s Thrush as one example illustrating this phenomenon.
He concluded his talk by rhetorically asking what the future holds for the next 100 years, pointing out that because we lack the resources—human and financial—to help every species, we’ll need to find ways to determine which species will be the most vulnerable and prioritize them when possible. If we at least preserve landscapes, habitats, and contiguous wildlife corridors, we will provide some support to threatened species.
At 8:11 pm, Vice President Gabriel Willow thanked Jason for his talk and facilitated the Q&A portion of the program.
At 8:36 pm, Vice President Willow passed the floor back to President Chaya, who also thanked the speaker, as well as the audience, and invited viewers to return on February 8, 2022, for the next speaker program, “Rendezvous with the Raven: Exploring Connections Among the Trickster, Wolves, and People,” by John Marzluff, Ph.D.
8:38 pm—The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Simmons, Recording Secretary