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				“A Wing And A Prayer: Population Growth and Outdoor America” The Izaak Walton League of America By Phil H. Shook June Osborne had hopes that spring day that a golden-cheeked warbler would visit her specially designed water drip made from jugs near the banks of the Sabinal River in Texas. Osborne is a birding guide in the Texas Hill Country. She helps dedicated birding enthusiasts get a glimpse of this little bird whose numbers are threatened. She knew it wouldn't be easy to lure one to the water. The five-inch-long warblers, with faces streaked in Apache gold and black war paint, are secretive. They nest in heavy stands of ashe juniper on uneven, rocky terrain and are difficult to locate for a good look. Experienced birders find them most often by listening for their buzzy courtship songs during their March to April nesting season. "You almost have to learn the song of the bird to find it," Osborne explains. Osborne had been seeing other insect-eating birds show up at the water drip and she thought a golden-cheek might make an appearance. "We were seeing black-caped vireos coming to the water and we kept thinking, 'please let the golden-cheeks come,' " she says. That's when a couple from England visiting Texas on a birding excursion came up to her and made an exciting revelation. There was a pair of golden-cheeks nesting right behind their cabin. "I went around and looked and the pair were busily feeding young in their nest," Osborne recalls. For Osborne and others intrigued by the bird, the sighting of golden cheeks with their young in the Texas Hill Country is a special event. It brings to mind the remarkable little bird's heroic journeys and monumental determination to survive in the face of continuing challenges. A true Texas original, the golden-cheeked warbler is the only bird species that breeds entirely within the state's borders. They have one of the most restricted nesting ranges of any North American bird. They nest in the Hill Country, where they build their nests solely from strips of ashe juniper bark. As insect eaters, golden-cheeks also require the proximity of broad leaf trees and shrubs nearby to provide them with their diet of caterpillars, spiders, and beetles. To make the journey between Texas and their winter range in the tropics of southern Mexico and the Central America, the birds must fly across the Sierra Oriental Mountains of Mexico, a mountain range that runs the length of the country. With a passport stamped each year in a half dozen countries, golden-cheeks, like other neotropical birds, serve as a measurement of the health of a region's natural resources. They benefit from sound habitat management and responsible land stewardship. They suffer from habitat loss, slash-and-burn agricultural practices, urban sprawl and expanding human population. Says Jim Baird with the Izaak Walton League's Sustainability Education Program, "The golden-cheeks are prime examples of wildlife that Americans care about and value and think of as 'ours' but are part of a much larger web." "Right now I am driving down U.S. Highway 183 and there are building cranes everywhere," says Clif Ladd, a biologist with an Austin, Texas planning firm who has written extensively on the warbler. "They are building an enormous highway that is running right through an area where 15 years ago I could find golden-cheeked warblers. Now it is a construction zone." In Texas, where the bird spends about half the year, the golden cheek has to cope with a number of serious challenges. Habitat loss is the single biggest concern for the species in the Texas Hill Country. Urban sprawl destroys its habitat or breaks it up into smaller parcels. For example, the rapid growth in recent years of Austin, Texas, which lies near the heart of the warbler's prime nesting range, and other rural expansion in Central Texas has reduced suitable habitat for the warbler up to 45 percent in the last 15 years. Though initiatives are under way to address the loss of habitat and other threats, many observers say the root problem remains the relentless growth in human population on both ends of the bird's range. It is not just the expansion of fast-growing cities like Austin -- which lies on the eastern edge of the warbler's habitat -- that is the issue, says Ladd. "I wish our only problem was urbanization because that would mean we are consolidating our human population in urban areas, not spreading all over creation." Instead, Ladd points to the habitat loss that also is happening in rural and suburban areas. "People are going everywhere," he describes. Big tracts and big ranches are being split up, people are buying more ranchettes, buying a hundred acres here and there, some of them are five and ten acres. Ladd explains that it is not just population growth but also population movement, that creates problems for wildlife and natural resources. He notes that newcomers contribute much of the growth. They migrate from different parts of the country with no knowledge of the region's natural history. "They are in a new place and they have a their job and health care and they drive back and forth. They have heard something about this little bird but they are disconnected from the land and they don't have any notion of what it should be like or how they are affecting it." Austin's population is projected to double in the next 30 years, a scenario that Ladd calls describes as scary. "We ought to be able to project (the survival of) these birds for at least 100 years," Ladd says. "But can we? Is our preserve system going to be adequate? My fear is that it won't." There are no exact figures for the current population of golden-cheeked warblers throughout their nesting range in Texas. However, estimates over the last three decades suggest serious declines. In 1974, the population was estimated at 15,000 to 17,000 birds. By 1990, it had dropped to fewer than 4,600. In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the golden-cheeked warbler on its endangered species list. That means it is illegtal to kill, capture, harm, or harass the bird. Landowners who want to bulldoze warbler habitat on their land now must first get permission from the government and offer a plan to preserve the species. Biologists say there has been an increased awareness of the golden-cheek in Texas in recent years not only because of its designation as an endangered species but also for its economic and emotional value. Publicity about the warbler's plight has drawn more people to state parks and wildlife management areas in the Texas Hill Country for a glimpse at the little bird. The tourism dollar is the largest impetus for a growing sense of stewardship for the species, says Fred Gehlbach, research professor of biology at Baylor University who has studied the bird for 40 years. The other aspect, he says, though minor by comparison, is a basic ethical concern for the future of the species. Despite declining numbers, there are a number of management initiatives on behalf of the golden cheeked warbler in Texas that appear to be getting positive results. There are also encouraging signs that more private landowners understand the importance of the warblers and other wildlife and they are doing a better job of managing their properties. Gehlbach cites research he has done at Meridian State Park south of Dallas as well as 15 sites that show some gains for the warbler. "We have increased awareness and concern on the part of the public in general and this includes a considerable number of ranchers. They are beginning to realize that they can require an admission fee to see warblers on their ranch." Ladd agrees. "I think people are starting to realize more now than they did when the warbler was first listed that the government is not going to come and take away their land because there is an endangered species there." The threat posed by habitat loss in Texas is just part of the story. In the winter range, golden-cheeked warblers face even more challenges caused by a growing human population. Stretching for millions of square miles across Central America, the golden-cheek's southern home is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world-home to 7 percent of the Earth's animal species. Rapid changes in the region have been threatening the forests for the last several decades. With 37 million people and an average 3 percent population growth each year, there is considerable population pressure. Migrants from more densely populated areas move into the forests to work for timber and mining companies. Commercial agriculture for beef and coffee production, combined with slash-and-burn techniques, wipe out large swaths of the forest cover. In addition, pesticide use - or the lack of it - can create problems for the warblers. Spraying to control the Mediterranean fruit fly in Guatemala devastated many species of insects that warblers eat. On the other hand, lack of spraying against pine beetles is allowing these pests to kill massive numbers of the trees that warblers depend on. Fortunately, there are a number of successful government and private organizations taking an integrated approach to protecting Central America's forest resources. Recognizing that the threats come from several interrelated causes, groups are combining education, alternative economic activities, sustainable land use practices, and voluntary family planning to reduce the impact of population growth on the land. Support by the international community for voluntary family planning is seen as essential to reduce further erosion of critical habitat. According to the Audubon Society, about 60 percent of the human population growth occurring in this decade occurs in countries with tropical forests. Conservation International is a U.S.-based nonprofit that receives funds from the U.S. Agency for International Development for its conservation work in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Working with local groups, Conservation International has been integrating voluntary family planning programs as a tool to address community and conservation needs. According to Carol Boender, a population environment fellow for Conservation International, conservation organizations must deal with human population growth in rural areas because government agencies that run most of the family planning and reproductive health programs expend most of their resources in urban areas. "The areas we are concerned with as a conservation organization are those very remote rural areas where it is easy to assume people don't live because they are protected areas," Boender says. "But in fact, there usually are people living in protected areas. Some of them may be settled there for generations, and others may be recent migrants." Boender says these families tend to be large-eight children is the norm. They also have little access to health services. "So simply giving those women access to voluntary family planning and reproductive health services has a huge impact on the quality of life and the quality of the environment they are living in," she says. But addressing poverty and the need for economic opportunity is also part of the solution for protecting golden-cheek warbler habitat. One effort under way is the work by Defensores de la Natureleza in Guatemala to protect critical wintering habitat through an agro-forestry and reforestation program. This organization is helping to develop agriculture, energy, and forestry options as an alternative to habitat clearing. In southern Mexico, the conservation group Pronatura Chiapas is working on a joint project with the Nature Conservancy to benefit warblers and other neotropical birds. Pronatura's staff became interested in offering family planning services when they found that the women with whom they worked on agriculture and environmental education were beginning to ask for reproductive health services. Now the staff, who are biologists by training, find themselves administering activities in eco-tourism, basic health care, and family planning, as well as harvesting of different forest products. These programs are succeeding, says Jim Nations formerly with the Conservation Stewards Program with Conservation International. "There are women that would prefer to have three kids, or even two kids, rather than seven or eight, but they don't have access to the information or to the technologies to space their births. Without being able to plan their families, they do have the eight kids. And those kids go on to become as their parents were - slash-and-burn farmers, which means deforesting the complete environment. They don't want to be having children that they don't want and can't afford to raise. They don't want to be having abortions. All they want to do is plan their family the same way that any woman in Austin, Texas, can do." Back in Texas, despite his serious concerns for the long term, Clif Ladd and other naturalists continue to work on golden-cheeked protection within the changing urban and rural landscapes. Ladd helped write the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan, a habitat conservation initiative whose partners include the City of Austin, Travis County, the Lower Colorado River Authority, The Nature Conservancy and the Travis County Audubon Society. Each of these entities has provided land that will be part of the proposed 30,428-acre Balcones Canyonlands Preserve that will include protected habitat for the warblers. Other management initiatives designed to protect the warbler are under way at state parks and wildlife management areas. Bill Armstrong, a biologist at the Kerr Wildlife Management Area, identifies eduction and sound management as essential elements in protecting the existing habitat from the onslaught of human population growth. "You would like human population not continue to have an adverse impact but it is going to happen," Armstrong says. Twice a year the golden-cheeked warbler faces hazards on its journey between the starkly contrasting worlds of its winter and summer ranges. Some believe, however, that on each trip it bears on its fragile wings, the future hopes of a better life for people in both regions- and the excitement of Texas birding enthusiasts for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.