A Bad Year for Birds (and for us)

We'll return to bicycles and birding, but this moment calls for more.

Over 1,000 people marched from City Hall on Monday in condemnation of the Trump administration and Elon Musk.

This is a very bad year for birds.

I’m not talking about the avian flu epidemic currently killing millions of chickens. I do, of course, hope the ensuing rise in prices prompts us to reflect on the lives and conditions of our egg-laying friends before purchasing another cheap dozen. But my concerns in this moment are much broader—for all birdkind, for us humans, for everyone in between.

It’s difficult to overstate the impacts of the past month. It’s difficult to know where to start. I hope you’ll allow me a moment’s departure from birding news to address news that transcends birding.

Some days, it seems as though the reins of this country are in the hands of a vengeful, greedy child attempting to wreck everything in sight. Sure enough, when you give such a child power over vast systems and swaths of land and people, the result is extremely, extremely bad. Some days, it seems far more sinister than that. It’s hard not to see parallels to the most horrific regimes of history in what is beginning now.

This blog is largely about birds, birding, and wild nature, so I’ll speak to that. On Friday, 80 employees were fired from the USFWS wildlife office in Portland, which manages endangered species protection across the Pacific Northwest. This is a death knell for many of Oregon’s most iconic, remarkable, and precious creatures, who depend on the work of these biologists and managers for the preservation and maintenance of their dwindling homes. When these public caretakers are lost, our endangered species will follow. When these species are lost, it will be irredeemable.

Several of my close friends work in the Forest Service, which has been cut down at the knees in the past week. One friend, who helps manage a federal nursery that provides seedlings to regrow forest across millions of acres, has lost half of her staff. This means a barren future for our public lands. She told me today, 26 people on our forest have been fired, and they’re calling it ‘phase 1.’

On Sunday, I reached out to another friend, a smart and energetic botanist who I had the privilege of working with while researching rare plants in southern Utah. He’d been working with the Forest Service for years, finally securing a coveted permanent position. Hey, Thomas, he said. Good to hear from you. I was actually just fired within the hour. It's truly batshit out there.

One of my roommate’s colleagues had been working with the Forest Service on Mt. Hood National Forest for over 20 years. He was fired with no cause on Friday.

Thousands of these public servants were sent blanket emails giving them one hour’s notice to leave the premises. People have described these as mass layoffs, but layoffs provide employees with the ability to get unemployment while they search for another position. These are not layoffs, but firings—purportedly performance-based, although obviously not based on performance (yes, this is illegal). These tens of thousands of workers in the USFS, NPS, EPA, NIH, CDC, USAID, and many other agencies have lost their jobs and are now barred from getting unemployment or other support. Many lost housing, still more healthcare. These are folks who have spent the careers serving the American public, who support communities, who support families. So much for putting the American family first.

Can you imagine working your whole career for a community, a place, a people, only to suddenly lose your job at the whim of a billionaire? To be asked to leave one Friday afternoon and not return? To suddenly wonder how will you support yourself, your kids, your aging parents, in a country that routinely abandons its most vulnerable?

Perhaps you don’t need to imagine.

What will happen to all the small towns when the campgrounds and forest roads around them don’t open this summer? What will happen when their ranger stations close and the influx of recreation that kept their economies afloat dwindles to nothing? Or, perhaps worse, when it continues with no cleanup, no management, no functioning bathrooms? What will happen to the marbled murrelet? The Oregon silverspot? The western snowy plover?

And of course, what will happen to the most vulnerable people in our communities—immigrants, queer and trans folks, the disabled, the unhoused? They are the targets of the worst of this abuse. In many respects, America has never been a very safe or welcoming country for them, but today’s America is positively nightmarish.

And the nightmares extend far beyond our borders. With the support and arms of the U.S., over 48,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza, among them, over 38,000 civilians and 18,000 children.

This seems to me to be a particularly historical moment, with profoundly important questions. How can we protect the vulnerable, and welcome them into our lives and communities? How do we fight inequity and injustice in all its forms? How can we stand together against tyranny and dictatorship?

I don’t have all the answers, but I’m thinking hard about these questions. I hope you feel compelled to think about them, too, and to let them guide your actions this year. The birds—and I—will thank you.

-Thomas

As told in the diversity of signs... there's a lot to be angry about right now. And, as always—a lot worth fighting for.