2019-06-11 · birds (1970 baseline, N. America)
Three billion birds gone since 1970
North American breeding birds collapsed — grassland and forest species led the loss. A continent-scale warning.
Biomass grids are about weight on Earth, not headcount — a whale and a mouse can share a color family but not a cell count story. This grid divides breeding birds 1970 (2019 snapshot) into colored bands — Lost since 1970 and Still breeding (2020s) — using equal squares so you compare shares, not country size on a map.
1 cell = 10 million birds (1970 baseline, N. America) (0.1% of breeding birds 1970) · 1,000 cells
Context
The 2019 figures from Science — bird decline put Still breeding (2020s) at 70% of breeding birds 1970 and Lost since 1970 at 30% — about $10 billion birds (1970 baseline, N. America) in this edition's rounding.
Science 2019: ~3B fewer birds in US/Canada since 1970.
Rosenberg et al. Science 2019: ~3B fewer birds in US/Canada since 1970.
Share and export
Credit this grid as Inagrid — https://inagrid.com/e/2019-06-11-bird-population-loss