WASHINGTON (April 9, 2024) – The U. S. Home of Representatives handed a bipartisan invoice reauthorizing and enhancing a program that gives funding all through the Americas for partnerships to learn migratory birds and their habitat. At a time when migratory birds are dealing with inhabitants declines resulting from habitat loss and local weather threats, the Migratory Birds of the Americas Conservation Enhancements Act would reauthorize essential funding for the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act (NMBCA) program and improve its accessibility for companions
The laws was co-sponsored by Representatives María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Rick Larsen (D-WA), Dave Joyce (R-OH), and Mary Peltola (D-AK). A Senate model, co-sponsored by Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.), was launched final month.
“We have now misplaced three billion birds since 1970—a staggering quantity—and this laws is critically essential to assist communities and companions meet the challenges of the second so we will preserve migratory birds for years to return,” mentioned Marshall Johnson, chief conservation officer on the Nationwide Audubon Society. “96 million Americans engage in birdwatching, contributing $100 billion to the U.S. economy each year. Investing in migratory chicken conservation throughout the hemisphere is important to reversing these troubling chicken declines. We thank the Home and the co-sponsors of this invoice for his or her management, and urge swift passage of the companion invoice within the Senate.”
Since 2002, the NMBCA has funded more than 700 projects in 35 nations all through the Western Hemisphere. This system has benefitted greater than 5 million acres of habitat throughout the nesting, stopover, and wintering grounds for greater than 350 species that migrate every year between the U.S. and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
For instance, the NMBCA has conserved key forested landscapes for Cerulean Warblers from the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia to the Andes Mountains in Colombia, improved grassland habitat for Bobolinks on working lands from New York to Argentina, and benefitted shorebirds similar to Hudsonian Godwits from Alaska to Chile.
Media contact: Robyn Shepherd, robyn.shepherd@audubon.org
About Audubon
The Nationwide Audubon Society protects birds and the locations they want, right this moment and tomorrow. Audubon works all through the Americas utilizing science, advocacy, schooling, and on-the-ground conservation. State applications, nature facilities, chapters, and companions give Audubon an unparalleled wingspan that reaches tens of millions of individuals every year to tell, encourage, and unite numerous communities in conservation motion. A nonprofit conservation group since 1905, Audubon believes in a world by which folks and wildlife thrive. Be taught extra at www.audubon.org and on Fb, Twitter and Instagram @audubonsociety.