Climate change threatens the birds people love most

A new study combines approaches from biology and psychology to link people’s cultural connections to birds with environmental change for the first time.

“In the future, we predict that rainforests will become dry forests, which means we may be seeing less of those birds. That’s a loss not only for biodiversity but also for people’s history and culture.”

For their study in Conservation Letters, researchers focused on Costa Rica, a premier destination for the multibillion-dollar birdwatching industry.

They sought to understand which birds Costa Ricans love the most—and which birds people can’t stand—and explored the potential cultural impact of losing those birds.

Here, study co-leader Alejandra Echeverri, a postdoctoral researcher in the Stanford University Natural Capital Project, discusses the many cultural benefits that birds provide to people and the ways in which the most vulnerable species are also those most deeply embedded in our cultures.

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