Every spring, the familiar songs of Wood Thrushes and warblers return to the parks and backyards of eastern North America. But their journey begins far to the south-in the lush, remote forests of Central America that sustain them throughout most of the year.
A new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (Cornell Lab), published in Biological Conservation, reveals that the Five Great Forests of Central America-which stretch from southern Mexico to northern Colombia-are indispensable lifelines for dozens of migratory bird species that link the Americas.
Using information on where bird populations concentrate week by week each year-made possible by millions of observations around the world from birdwatchers on the Lab of Ornithology's eBird platform-scientists found that these five forests collectively support between one-tenth and nearly one-half of the global populations of 40 migratory bird species, including some of North America's most rapidly declining birds.
