| Federal and state laws regulating the wholesale slaughter of nesting birds by early hunters and collectors saved many avian populations. A century later, the same statutes are being applied to various other activities with potential to incidentally disrupt nesting birds. Enforcement is largely limited to governmental agencies, other large land managers, and energy projects. Agriculture and the general public seldom attract regulatory scrutiny. In the vanishingly small percentage of situations that are effectively regulated, the laws protect individual birds and their nests, ignoring the main drivers of avian population declines: loss, degradation, and fragmentation of natural habitats. Thus, as modern conservation tools, these laws are both arbitrary and ineffective. Furthermore, court decisions have recently cast legal doubt on federal plans for a Migratory Bird Treaty Act permitting system to govern the unintentional take of birds by industry. Federal and state governments should abandon the quixotic effort to address bird-conservation threats via archaic hunting laws in favor of modern permitting systems that reasonably limit enforcement to industries with the greatest potential to diminish bird populations, while providing flexibility for approved projects. Applying some of the permit fees toward dedicated habitat restoration programs would help to mitigate avian population declines. |