FWS declines federal listing for tricolored blackbird

After conducting what it called "an extensive review of the best available science," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the tricolored blackbird does not require protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The FWS said ongoing conservation efforts, partnerships, and public and private land-management activities are helping to ensure the long-term conservation of the species, which is found throughout much of California and parts of Oregon, Washington and Nevada. The service said it "will continue its work with partners to help the species remain resilient."

The bird remains listed as a threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act, a designation made in 2018.

The most recent effort to list the bird as endangered or threatened under the federal ESA came in 2015, when the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the FWS.

In denying the bird's listing last week, the FWS said that even though the species currently faces "many threats throughout its range" and has "undergone a substantial decline in recent decades," the most recent statewide surveys recorded more than 100,000 tricolored blackbirds.

The service noted the birds have shown "high nesting success in both small and large colonies, indicating that they may be adaptable to changing colony size as well as changing nesting habitat types."

The FWS also said regulatory mechanisms such as the California ESA are lessening the severity of some of the bird's existing threats, such as impacts to colonies nesting in silage fields. Tricolored blackbirds historically nested in Central Valley wetlands, but with the loss of habitat, the birds have come to rely on feed crops such as triticale to establish their nesting colonies.

For years, California farmers have worked to help blackbird colonies found in their fields. With funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers who have blackbirds nesting in their fields are offered payments to help offset the expense and crop losses caused by delaying their harvests until the birds have fledged. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service estimates the program has helped to save thousands of blackbirds in recent years.

Noelle Cremers, policy advocate for the California Farm Bureau Federation, also pointed to the success of the Voluntary Local Program, which protected nesting colonies on 14 Central Valley dairies this spring.

Under that program—established this year in an agreement between CFBF and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and effective for the next five years—farmers who agree to protect colonies of tricolored blackbirds nesting in their fields are themselves protected from liability for incidental take, while also being compensated for some of the lost crop value through NRCS.

With their distinctive red-and-white wing patch, tricolored blackbirds form large breeding colonies that number in the thousands. During nesting season, the birds gather together to hatch and raise their young.

The FWS concluded that "the most likely future scenarios project that the tricolored blackbird will maintain its current resiliency, representation or redundancy, or undergo only a slight decrease in habitat and population condition in some regions in the foreseeable future."

(Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)