But avian biodiversity, like the biodiversity of other species, has plummeted, in the United States as elsewhere. Urban sprawl, industrial agriculture, and climate change, among other disruptions caused by human activity, steadily destroy bird habitats, reducing the number of species among us. But habitat destruction doesn’t affect all species equally. Some species—the so-called specialist species—get hit especially hard. They’re the ones, like monarch butterflies, salamanders, and woodpeckers and rails, that rely on exacting conditions and can’t easily survive when those conditions change.
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