Why it matters that climate change is shrinking birds

BY BRIAN WEEKS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR —07/10/21 09:30 AM EDT320THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

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Many of the benefits that humanity derives from the natural world, like the provisioning of oxygen, are priceless. Those ecosystem services that can have a dollar value assigned to them, for example the pollination of crops, generate far more value for humanity each year than the entirety of theglobal economy. Climate change can threaten these services throughthe loss of speciesor shifts in species’sizeorabundance. For example,warming temperatures have reduced the size of many birds over the last four decades; this is emblematic of the scale of climate change impacts on the world’s biological diversity. There is an urgent need for action.

Shrinking birds are indicative…