Bird Alert

Bird Alert

In the vast boreal forests of Alberta, Canada, as many as 166 million birds - including the Canada warbler (Wilsonian canadensis), pictured above - could die within the next 50 years, predicts a December 2008 NRDC report. The cause: the extraction and production of oil from the province's huge tar sands reserves.

The Canadian boreal is the annual breeding site of tens of millions of migratory birds. The tar sands reserves, which lie underground, contain bitumen, a viscous liquid that can be converted into fuel. The United States is the world's largest consumer of Alberta tar sands oil, which has a production process that is destructive to critical bird-breeding habitat. As a result, over the next 20 years, some 36 million birds that would otherwise begin life in the boreal may never get the chance to, according to Danger in the Nursery: Impact on Birds of Tar Sands Oil Development in Canada's Boreal Forest. Today the region's fowl are threatened by tar sands-related pollutants, including cadmium and mercury, which can cause kidney damage and cancer.

"These are our backyard birds," says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of NRDC's Canada program and coauthor of the report. "It is our duty to protect them." NRDC has called for a moratorium on all tar sands expansion.