(Washington, D.C., August 14, 2014) American Bird Conservancy (ABC), says that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposal to designate critical habitat for the western population of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo falls far short of providing the necessary habitat protection for the imperiled bird species whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades.

"The draft critical habitat rule doesn't designated enough habitat for protection,” said Steve Holmer, senior policy advisor with American Bird Conservancy. “This is a missed opportunity to protect all of the remaining occupied habitat and to identify and conserve areas needed for riparian restoration and growing back more Yellow-billed Cuckoo habitat.”

The draft rule, expected to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, proposes 546,335 acres of critical habitat in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.  However, FWS is proposing to exclude 193,691 acres, mostly on private lands and it did not designate smaller patches of currently occupied habitat, or areas the species used to inhabit. The public will have sixty days to comment.

In the United States, only 350 to 495 pairs of the bird exist, with a similar number found in Mexico. The birds are isolated in small patches of increasingly degraded riparian forest habitat. The species has been extirpated or nearly so from most of its historical range across portions of 12 western states as well as British Columbia. In California, the population is estimated to be less than one percent of its probable historic size. Very small populations of less than 10 pairs exist in Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, and Texas, and in Idaho and Utah only an estimated 10 to 20 pairs remain.

Only in a portion of the species' range in Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Mexico do significant populations remain, but the trend continues to be downward. The extent of the cuckoo's riparian habitat loss is extreme: 90 to 95 percent in Arizona, 90 percent in New Mexico, and 90 to 99 percent in California. In Arizona, the state with largest U.S. cuckoo population, numbers have declined 70 to 80 percent in the past 30 years.

In a December 2, 2013 letter to FWS available here ABC raised concern that the agency's proposed threatened listing wasn't enough and should be changed to endangered status due to very low population numbers and the lack of adequate regulations to halt habitat loss and degradation.

"The cuckoo's draft listing rule found there is ongoing degradation and habitat loss, and concludes that these impacts are anticipated to continue for decades to come,” said Holmer. "These factors point to the need for a robust critical habitat designation, not the bare minimum we see being proposed."

A March 2013 report by American Bird Conservancy suggests that pesticide use may have implications for the cuckoo population. It found that a single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid, now the most widely used class of pesticides in the world, can kill a songbird. Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the oldest neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, can fatally poison a bird. As little as one-tenth of a neonicotinoid-coated corn seed per day during egg-laying season is all that is needed to affect reproduction.

“We are pleased that pesticides were identified as a threat in many of the proposed critical habitat units,” said Holmer. “However, as long-distance, nocturnal migrants, Yellow-billed Cuckoos are vulnerable to collisions with tall buildings, cell towers, radio antennas, wind turbines, and other structures; no protection or management requirements were proposed for along the migratory route.”

The cuckoos are known to be attracted to lights that can lead to fatal collisions. An ABC report documenting bird deaths at towers found evidence of a total of 568 Yellow-billed Cuckoo deaths at 17 towers.