U.S. must protect migratory birds

The following is an excerpt from an editorial that ran in the Chicago Tribune.

Passenger pigeons used to be so abundant in North America that migrating flocks blocked out the sun. But by the early part of the 20th century, the number was zero. Human predation brought their extinction.

In 1916, Canada and the United States tried to avert such outcomes by entering into the Migratory Bird Treaty. Two years later, Congress acted to enforce it with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. More than1,000 species of birds are covered.

For decades, the Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have used the law to protect birds not only from hunting but from industrial and agricultural activities that pose a serious hazard.

But under Ryan Zinke, the Interior Department intends to excuse any bird deaths that result from accidents, no matter how large or preventable.

But this is one of those instances where, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.”

The law has been interpreted and applied in a spirit of common sense, under the scrutiny of federal courts, and it has allowed private enterprise to operate without undue hassle.

That approach has saved untold numbers of birds, without preventing the expansion of oil and gas output, the proliferation of wind farms or the production of food and fibre. The new policy is a solution in search of a problem.