Birds Are Key to Our Survival: Why We Must Protect Them Now

Their songs make us look up and signal the onset of winter. The grey cranes migrate southward. Under the slanting sun, their V-shaped formation stretches across the horizon, battling the wind. It serves as a marker in our lives—a seasonal transition that keeps us grounded and alive.

Yet, their calls seem to be vanishing today. An avian flu epidemic is causing a massive die-off, as Decatur Metro recently reported. The grey crane population could decrease by 10% this year due to the pandemic. During their migration, sick birds are literally falling from the sky, crashing into fields, rooftops, and roads.

This disaster isn’t external to us. It touches us deeply, in a personal and physical way. With their disappearance, our own lives are thrown into disarray. We are not impervious to the world’s suffering.

Sociologist Bruno Latour once remarked that in the face of the climate crisis, “the ground is slipping from beneath our feet”. Like an earthquake, a profound disorientation that throws us off balance. But it is not just the earth; the sky too fails us, the blue grows silent, and our eyes weary from watching an endlessly empty horizon.

It is a staggering reality. Part of the world is fading away. With its grace, beauty, and joy. The statistics are grim. Nearly a quarter of the bird population in Europe has vanished between 1980 and 2020, roughly 800 million individuals. Farmland species are the hardest hit, with declines of up to 60%. Overall, at least 1,430 bird species, or 12% of species worldwide, have been lost due to human impact.

“Something very familiar is being gradually taken away from us, something enveloping and ancient, the usual proof and celebration of the world, this always singing access to the intensity of life that seems to come, joyously, from birds”, writes Marielle Macé in her book Nos Cabanes (Verdier, 2019).

The author encourages a shift in perspective to redefine how we engage with and think about the current crisis. “Ecology today cannot be just a matter of increasing knowledge and control, nor even preservation or repair”, she states. “It must involve a philia: a friendship for life itself and for the multitude of its expressions, a concern, a care, an attachment to the existence of other forms of life and a desire to truly connect with them.”

In Habiter en oiseau (Actes Sud, 2019), philosopher Vinciane Despret describes her pivotal encounter with a blackbird at her bedroom window and how she was captivated by its melody, the variety of its tones, akin to “an audiobook novel”. Ornithologists say that birds sing with “bodily enthusiasm”, with a form of “exhilaration”, an overflowing generosity. “I had the most intense, most palpable feeling that the fate of the entire Earth or perhaps the existence of beauty itself, at that moment, rested on the shoulders of this blackbird”, writes Vinciane Despret.

Birds are at the forefront of ecological thinking. Our fate is intertwined with theirs. This is a truth that environmental advocates have long felt viscerally. “We live in sung territories”, observed composer and bioacoustician Bernie Krause as early as the 1960s, who spent his life cataloging the sounds of nature. We are part of the same “acoustic community that vocalizes in affinity”, he claimed. We need to learn to harmonize and tune in with the songs of our neighbors.

In her seminal book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson also intertwined our future with that of the birds. The renowned scientist highlighted the damage caused by a pesticide (DDT) on many species and questioned: “Can a civilization wage relentless war against life without destroying itself and losing the right to be called ‘civilized’?”

Birds hold a special place in our lives. Their role is as symbolic as it is crucial. Their disappearance causes us “ecological grief” (Philippe J. Dubois), but their vibrant presence also reenchants our everyday life.

The pioneer of ecology, forester Aldo Leopold, was the first to suggest in the 1940s that the severance between humans and these species could lead to psychological instability. He wrote beautifully about the passenger pigeon in the United States, exterminated in the early 20th century by American settlers.

“We mourn because no living man will again see the hurricane of a victorious phalanx of birds spring open the route of spring across the March sky and drive winter from the woods and prairies of Wisconsin”, he said. With their annihilation, something was forever lost. “For the first time, and in a completely new way, a species mourns another”, he wrote.

Our collective survival depends on them. Ecologists have been hammering this point for decades, often to general indifference. A pioneer of ecology in France, ornithologist Jean Dorst, emphasized this as early as 1965 in his book Before Nature Dies. He defended their cause throughout his life. “Man has enough objective reasons to cling to the preservation of the wild world”, he said. “But nature will ultimately only be saved by our hearts.”

This emotional attachment can transform into political power. Interestingly, the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO) is one of the very first ecological associations in France, founded in 1912. Back then, a handful of nature lovers mobilized against the western railways organizing real safaris in Brittany to shoot down “calculots” on the Sept-Îles archipelago off Perros-Guirec.

During long weekends, thousands of puffins, guillemots, and little penguins fell under the pellets of tourists before filling the city’s trash bins. In two years, the puffin population plummeted from 20,000 to 2,000 birds. But the early members of the LPO managed to stop the slaughter. After a fierce battle, they established the country’s first ornithological reserve.

Today, the LPO remains one of the leading ecological organizations in France, with nearly 75,000 members. Its president, Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, continues the fight, vehemently denouncing the collusion between Macron’s government, hunters, and environmental destroyers.

Over the years, birds have become emblems for our ecological battles. Anti-basin activists, for instance, erect effigies in tribute to the little bustard at Sainte-Soline. In Rouen, a totem in honor of the woodpecker is built against a highway. In Bure, the occupants of Lejuc woods nicknamed themselves “owls”.

This is a way to reaffirm that “we are not alone in our struggles”, philosopher Antoine Chopot reminded in an interview with Decatur Metro. “At heart, there is a search for new rituals to celebrate our connections with other-than-human entities. This isn’t mysticism, as it simply gives importance to other existences that are usually made invisible and massacred with indifference.”

And it’s not just symbolic. The blue tit temporarily halts the construction of the A69 highway between Toulouse and Castres. The stone-curlew blocks the construction of a prison near Perpignan. Life intervenes to stop deadly projects, and birds become new allies. Their vulnerability echoes ours and sketches our interdependencies. Defending and being defended by birds to jointly sketch a different future.

This was already advocated at the turn of the century by revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Her attachment to birds gave her the strength to survive imprisonment. The joy she perceived in their song gave her the courage to fight for another world.

“Do you know that I often feel I am not really a human being but a bird or some other animal in human form. In essence, I feel much more at home in a garden patch, like here, or in the countryside, lying in the grass among the bumblebees, than at a party congress”, she wrote. “I can tell you this; you won’t immediately suspect me of betraying socialism. You know, I hope to die despite everything at my post, in a street fight or a penitentiary. But deep inside, I am closer to my great tits than to comrades.”