Each map is a visual guide to where a particular bird species may find the climate conditions it needs to survive in the future. We call this the bird’s “climatic range.”
The colors indicate the season in which the bird may find suitable conditions— blue for winter, yellow for summer (breeding), and green for where they overlap (indicating their presence year-round).
The darker the shaded area, the more likely it is the bird species will find suitable climate conditions to survive there.
The outline of the approximate current range for each season remains fixed in each frame, allowing you to compare how the range will expand, contract, or shift in the future.
The first frame of the animation shows where the bird can find a suitable climate today (based on data from 2000). The next three frames predict where this bird’s suitable climate may shift in the future—one frame each for 2020, 2050, and 2080.
You can play or pause the animation with the orange button in the lower left, or select an individual frame to study by clicking on its year.
There are currently only about 350 Whooping Cranes in the wild today, making it one of the most endangered birds on the continent. But that’s a vast improvement: in 1941 there were only 21. Audubon's climate model projects an 85 percent loss of current winter range by 2080, possibly making conditions at their primary wintering location, Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, less amenable to the species. With just this one main wintering location, a single hurricane might deal a fatal blow to the entire species. Breeding sites in Canada and Idaho were not captured by the model and thus no summer result was produced.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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