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Global Reach of the Boreal Forest
Billions of birds spill southward each year
© Kentish Plumber / FCC
The boreal forest occupies a vast swath of northern North America, totaling 1.5 billion acres, stretching from interior Alaska eastward to the Atlantic coast. Jeff Wells, vice president of boreal conservation for the National Audubon Society, says, “It is one of the most intact forest landscapes left on earth. In the fall at the end of the nesting season...3-5 billion birds go spilling out across the Canada-U.S. border.” Birds such as the Short-Eared Owl (seen here.)
Hear more about the boreal forest and the people working to protect it on the Threatened podcast.
BirdNote®
Global Reach of the Boreal Forest
By Ari Daniel
This is BirdNote.
[boreal forest]
The boreal forest occupies a vast swath of northern North America, totaling 1.5 billion acres, stretching from interior Alaska eastwards to the Atlantic coast.
Jeff Wells: Kind of sandwiched in between the Arctic and the prairies.
Jeff Wells is vice president of boreal conservation for the National Audubon Society.
Jeff: It is one of the most intact forest landscapes left on earth. We estimate that there’s one to three billion, with a “B”, birds that nest there every year. And then in the fall at the end of the nesting season, when you add in the young of the year, there’s three to five billion that go spilling out across the Canada-U.S. border.
Jeff: These birds become the familiar birds for the backyards and gardens and parks and forests and wetlands of the U.S. and in points south all the way down into southern South America, for some of them.
Jeff: Maintaining places where they can successfully nest and breed and raise young is key to not only their survival, but the health of our entire world. There’s a global reach to everything in the boreal and maintaining that intactness is so crucial.
To hear more about the boreal forest and how people are working to protect it, subscribe to “Threatened” wherever you get your podcasts.
For BirdNote, I’m Ari Daniel.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Editor: Allison Wilson
Producer: Ari Daniel
Sounds of the boreal forest provided by Jeff Wells
© 2020 BirdNote December 2020 Narrator: Ari Daniel
ID# boreal-05-2020-12-17 boreal-05
Ari Daniel
Writer