Hannah Maltry holds her painting of the Reddish Egret, a fish-eating bird that forages in inlets, salt marshes and other tidal environments. Today’s stronger and more frequent tropical storms have degraded these regions and nearby nesting areas, causing population decline. To Maltry’s left, we see her painting of a Bald Eagle, done to celebrate what she calls its “incredible comeback,” thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the ban of agricultural use of DDT, which caused eagles’ eggs to be fragile and shatter before the chicks hatched. (Joseph Zummo)
“Habitat loss … habitat loss.” Hannah Maltry points to her paintings of birds displayed on her studio walls. She explains, one by one, why each species is today just holding onto existence. “With us chewing up the natural landscape, they’re all suffering,” she says.
Maltry, a 34-year-old Columbus, Ohio, artist, is painting the portrait of every one of the 2,000-some bird species in North America. So far, she’s completed more than 200 for a project she estimates could take 10 years. She works in watercolor, including with handmade paints from small, woman-owned businesses, and uses metallic-infused embellishments to convey the birds’ movement and their feathers’ sheen. Her contemporary depictions reveal the energy, the personality and what Maltry calls the “vibe” of each bird.
Hannah Maltry holds her painting of the Reddish Egret, a fish-eating bird that forages in inlets, salt marshes and other tidal environments. Today’s stronger and more frequent tropical storms have degraded these regions and nearby nesting areas, causing population decline. To Maltry’s left, we see her painting of a Bald Eagle, done to celebrate what she calls its “incredible comeback,” thanks to the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the ban of agricultural use of DDT, which caused eagles’ eggs to be fragile and shatter before the chicks hatched. (Joseph Zummo)
Before she began this bold and time-consuming project, Maltry worked as a graphic artist and web designer. Her affinity for the avian realm harkens back to her childhood outside Asheville, North Carolina, where she’d climb trees in the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains and became immersed in the lives of birds. “If you sit still long enough, they come to you,” Maltry says.
Nowadays, birds in all ecosystems, from coastlines to grasslands to forests to tundra, are imperiled. North America has lost nearly 29% of its bird population—3 billion individuals—since 1970, according to a 2019 study in Science magazine. In 2025, hundreds of species are still declining dramatically, says this year’s State of the Birds Report, from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Comparable patterns are seen worldwide.
The causes are the usual suspects, pesticides, plastic and other human products that destroy many forms of wildlife, as well as some that are particularly difficult for airborne creatures: habitat loss and fragmentation, due to increased urban development and the expansion of industrial agriculture; climate change and its effect on the native plants birds rely on for nesting and food, both locally and while migrating; and voracious house cats. About one billion birds in the United States now lose their lives each year crashing into the picture windows of commercial and residential buildings.
The Cerulean Warbler, seen here in a painting held by Hannah Maltry, struggles for survival, due to habitat loss throughout its range from the eastern half of the United States through Mexico to the northwestern portion of South America. Seen over Maltry’s right shoulder is the Western Cattle Egret, another bird facing habitat loss in a range that extends from the southern two-thirds of the United States through much of South America. (Joseph Zummo)
The massive scale of bird species’ collapse exposes the environmental destruction and climate change that are degrading the land, air and water that all the globe’s creatures rely on—including us humans. “When birds suffer, there’s more coming down the pipeline for the rest of us,” Maltry says. She hopes her work and her annual gallery and arts-festival showings of it will help drive public awareness. “I had a crazy idea,” she says of her decision to portray every species in North America. “I started looking into it, and it felt important to do.”
Today’s birds are akin to the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. Around the turn of the 20th century, canaries were carried into mines, where contaminated air would cause their bodies to droop and eventually collapse. Their resulting silence signaled to the miners that it was too dangerous for them to breathe.
“Birds are still warning us today—just on a much larger scale,” said Antonio Celis-Murillo, manager of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Bird Banding Laboratory, the major source of our information on the health and whereabouts of wild birds since 1920.
When Maltry talks to the numerous birdwatchers who supply her with information about birds they’ve observed, she hears about the continued population collapse as it’s happening. “They want to tell me their bird stories, what they saw, or what they used to see but don’t now,” she says. “Perhaps a tern they saw on a lake pretty consistently hasn’t been there for two or three seasons.”
Birds are far more than colorful songsters that occasionally flit through our lives. They are vital to a functional global environment and economy, according to major bird-conservation organizations—Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Bird Conservancy, American Birding Association, National Audubon Society, 3billionbirds.org and others. They’re pest-control agents, pollinators, seed dispersers, cleaners of carcasses and much more.
Hannah Maltry paints a Burrowing Owl, a daytime hunter that lives in tunnels borrowed from prairie dogs and similar underground dwellers. Habitat loss and declines in the prairie dog population have meant fast declining Burrowing Owl population in the western United States and South America. (Joseph Zummo)
“Nature’s sanitizing agents” is what Ohio Traveler magazine dubs the buzzards, a.k.a. turkey vultures, that return to Hinckley, Ohio, each spring. The birds clean up roadkill and anything else lying around and decomposing, “like nothing or no one else can do.” Not that Hinckley especially needs this, the magazine is careful to note. It just happens to benefit from the energetic birds. During the summer months, says Ohio Traveler, “there is nothing rotten in Hinckley.”
Birds are also essential to personal well-being. Hearing birdsong improves cognition and mental health, according to research. A 2022 study in Nature magazine’s “Scientific Report” found birdsong had a positive effect on anxiety, depression and paranoia. One study found that a 10% increase in the diversity of birds singing amplified listeners’ reported life satisfaction more than a comparable increase in income.
Birdwatching pumps $279 billion into the U.S. economy annually and supports 1.4 million jobs
Birding is also big business. The latest State of the Birds Report tells us that birdwatching pumps $279 billion into the U.S. economy annually and supports 1.4 million jobs, thanks to birders spending on binoculars, cameras, hiking gear, travel, lodging and much more. Just one species, the Northern Pintail duck, generates $100 million annually in birdwatchers’ and hunters’ expenditures as it ranges around North America, Cornell Lab tells us. Every spring, hundreds of thousands of migrating Sandhill cranes visit a 75-mile stretch of Nebraska’s Platte River, providing 13 rural Nebraska counties with an estimated $14.3 million economic boost and 182 full-time jobs.
Indeed, one single bird can generate substantial sums. When a rare eagle was spotted soaring along the Maine and Massachusetts coastlines in winter 2021–2022, birders traveling to see it poured $700,000 into the local economies, recounts “The Stellar Sea-Eagle in North America,” a 2023 article in British Ecological Society’s People and Nature.
You’ve got this!
We may be in the throes of a bird decline crisis, but each of us can be an important part of fixing it. Best of all, we know our efforts will work, as research has shown. The Science study mentioned above found that raptors, such as the bald eagle, and waterfowl, such as ducks, geese and swans, had made remarkable recoveries over the last 50 years thanks to conservation projects and legislation, especially the Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Here are a few tips to get started:
Get involved in whatever works best for you agree the conservation groups. Get out into nature and join the 96 million Americans—nearly one-third of the U.S. population—who Cornell Lab says engage in some form of birdwatching. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, no other outdoor recreation brings together so many people from so many regions and demographics.
Keep track of what you see. You can use Sibley Birder’s Life List and Field Diary, by David Sibley, to record your birdwatching observations (Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed, 2017). Or take advantage of an app. The eBird app offers a free web-based repository for your birdwatching data, where it can be used by students, scientists and others.
You can also stay close to home. Participate, along with hundreds of thousands worldwide, in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Observe your own yard and keep records for several days in the spring, submit your checklist, and thereby help scientists figure out how birds are doing and how best to protect them.
Check out Cornell Lab’s online Bird Academy for courses on painting birds, photographing birds in flight, attracting backyard birds, recording birdsong and much more.
Also at home, put native plants in your garden and avoid using pesticides there. To find appropriate plants, consult the Ecoregional Planting Guide from the National Park Service. Minimize your domestic cat’s outdoor time, and prevent window strikes with attractive, inexpensive window decals.
Follow the numerous entertaining and informative birding podcasts, ranging from the one-minute BirdNote Daily to longer shows like the American Birding Podcast, from the American Birding Association. In Sound Escapes, Gordon Hempton uses top audio equipment to create evocative field recordings of birdsong. He calls the earth a “solar-powered jukebox.”
Those solutions are personal. Others are community-based.
In an architect-designed flyway at Zuni Pueblo, in Zuni, New Mexico, tribal members care for some two dozen injured eagles. The raptors had collided with power lines, were attacked by other animals or were blinded or lamed by lead poisoning after feeding on the carcasses of animals shot with lead ammunition.
Pueblo of Zuni Fish and Wildlife Director Nelson Luna holds feathers dropped by eagles flying around the Zuni Eagle Sanctuary. Tribal members care for about two dozen injured golden and bald eagles in the 100-by-25-foot structure in Zuni, New Mexico. The feathers are used for religious and cultural purposes. (Joseph Zummo)
The Zunis set up their aviary after they learned in the early 1990s that veterinarians were euthanizing badly injured eagles they believed would not heal enough to survive in the wild. It was among the first of several Native-operated eagle sanctuaries, including those for non-releasable eagles, to open throughout the United States. Today, they’re found on the reservations of the Yakama Nation in Washington State, the Coeur D’Alene Tribe in Idaho and the Red Lake Band of the Chippewa Tribe in Minnesota, on the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation and elsewhere.
“An intrinsic relationship exists between Native peoples and the Eagle Nation,” says Ty Smith, project director of the multi-tribal Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio (NAICCO), in Columbus, and a member of Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, in Oregon. “When one thrives, the other thrives. When one struggles, the other struggles.”
Flying in the dark
Other actions have national repercussions. On June 23, some 2,000 protesters objected to plans to sell off public land announced at the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Santa Fe. These included the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposal to rescind the 2001 Roadless Rule, opening 59 million acres of the National Forest System—about 30% of the total—to road-building, logging, home construction and other development.
A USDA spokesperson told Barn Raiser the Santa Fe announcement was “the first step in rescinding the rule [and allowing] locally driven land-management decisions.”
Within days, opponents to the sell-off emerged nationwide. Businesses and industry organizations, sporting and recreation groups, tribes, scientists, authors, firefighters, the governors of Oregon and New Mexico, members of Congress and others objected forcefully.
“Our national forests are not mere woodlots,” said U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). He described them as national treasures that “safeguard clean water, preserve critical wildlife habitat and provide essential spaces for recreation and solace.” Opening them to development was what he called “a reckless giveaway.”
Smith, of NAICCO, is alarmed. He foresees “repercussions that these tidal waves of careless choices and acts have on both life today and life tomorrow.”
On the other hand, Secretary of the Interior Department Doug Burgum disagreed with Huffman’s position, telling Scripps News “there are ways to put public land to more productive use.”
Business groups condemned the USDA plan’s economic consequences. Marne Hayes, director of business for Montana’s Outdoors, represents 340 businesses and more than 4,500 jobs in Montana. “In Montana alone, [public lands] generate $4 billion every year,” said Hayes. “Rolling back the Roadless Rule would give the wealthiest Americans and corporations disproportionate control of our shared resources while handing down devastating consequences for regular Montanans’ well-being and prosperity.”
Wildfires would increase and be harder to control, warned Carson States, a wildland firefighter. The enhanced access to the remote forests and increased touristic and industrial activity multiplies the risk of what he termed “human-caused ignitions.” Even worse, the wildfires wouldn’t necessarily stay confined to the spots where they started. Firefighters could end up in isolated areas with limited escape routes and minimal access to emergency medical assistance, according to States.
A USDA spokesperson disagreed, telling Barn Raiser that roads will improve access to the fires, which can be “beneficial” for the forests by thinning them.
Birds are facing yet more challenges. The federal government has again provoked concern for their health and safety, with calls in the federal budget for fiscal year 2026 to shut down the century-old Bird Banding Laboratory. According to the National Audubon Society, this idea is part of eliminating anything thought to be in any way related to climate change. Further problems may be created by recent federal proposals to roll back the protections of the Environmental Species Act.
Hannah Maltry’s paintings celebrate birds’ glory and help the public better understand their struggle. With awareness, observation and shared information, we can work together to protect birds. We can encourage government at all levels to help. In doing so, we will help safeguard all creatures on earth, including humanity.
For information and inspiration, check out these resources.
The Sibley Guide to Birds, 2nd edition, by eminent bird authority and artist David Sibley, covers 1,000 North American species (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).
The Life of Birdsis an updated version of legendary naturalist David Attenborough’s bestselling classic about 11,000 of the world’s species (Harper Collins, 2025).
Complete Birds of the World, by distinguished artists and ornithologists Norman Arlott, Ber van Perlo, Jorge R. Rodriguez Mata, Gustavo Carrizo, Aldo A. Chiappe and Luis Huber, includes 10,700 of the species found globally (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Birds of America, the historic masterpiece by John James Audubon, first printed in the early 1800s with 435 color plates, is now available digitally from the National Audubon Society.
Stephanie Woodard is an award-winning journalist who writes on human rights and culture with a focus on Native American issues. She is the author of American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle for Self-Determination and Inclusion.
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