There was some tough news for us humans to hear in 2019. Fortunately, there was also some positive change.

First, the difficult news:

• A large international research effort showed that there are now a million species in endanger of extinction.
• Ornithologists published new findings documenting that there are now a billion fewer birds in North America than there were forty years ago.
• Entomologists discovered broad declines in insects.
• And just this fall, National Audubon released a major new report on the impacts of climate change on birds with the sobering news that two-thirds of North American birds could be at risk of extinction from climate change impacts without major action to reduce carbon emissions.

On the upside, lots of people have heeded the warnings about the health of our environment. These folks, working at all levels, from the home to the local, regional, national, and international arena, are fearlessly and diligently developing and enacting solutions.

A bright spot here in Maine continues to be the work of the myriad local and regional land trusts, like the Boothbay Region Land Trust, that steadily work to protect habitats that together support large numbers of breeding, migrant and wintering birds. These groups need our support including by pressing our state legislators to move forward the state land conservation bond that has been tragically stalled.

The Maine Bird Atlas Project, a citizen science effort to map the distributions of all the birds that breed and winter in the state, is a major bit of good news as the results will help to understand where priority areas are for conservation. They will also show how species are responding to continuing loss of habitat and climate change.

National Audubon’s Seabird Restoration Program and the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge are examples of how, with concerted focused effort, Maine’s seabird populations cahttps://www.boothbayregister.com/article/gift-lutsel-k-e/123060n be protected and restored. Atlantic puffins, razorbills, common, Arctic, and roseate terns and many other species continue to be a part of Maine’s natural heritage as a result of this work.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) has been incredibly active in helping move forward government legislation and policies that are good news for birds and the environment in which they live. NRCM has led efforts resulting in forthcoming bans on single-use plastic bags and foam packaging, and is serving on the Maine Climate Council put in place by Governor Mills to address climate change. NRCM is helping Maine people understand why we should all oppose projects like the proposed CMP corridor that would cut through the Western Maine mountains, harming bird and brook trout habitat in order to deliver electricity from Canada to Massachusetts, with no climate change benefits.

On the international front, the Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation reached the culmination of more than a decade of work and, in August, finalized the creation of the Thaidene Nene Indigenous Protected Area in partnership with the Government of Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thaidene Nene’s 6 million acres host ten million or more breeding birds including Bonaparte’s gulls, common redpolls, and blackpoll warblers.

The coming year has the promise of even more and bigger good news both here in Maine and across the hemisphere. But that good news will come only if all of us keep maintaining support for the incredible efforts of people, conservation organizations, and progressive leaders in government and across society to protect our environment. As we end 2019 and look forward to 2020, let us thank those among us who have continued to work tirelessly to enact solutions that match the scale needed to bring balance back to our relationship with the environment.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of “Birder’s Conservation Handbook”. His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide” from Cornell Press.