The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Feb. 11 for failing to make a preliminary decision about whether to expand protection for the saltmarsh sparrow, a bird whose population is in sharp decline around the Chesapeake Bay and the marshes along the East Coast.
The secretive little brown and gray bird, with orange around its cheeks and a whitish belly, only nests in grassy tidal marshes along the northeastern Atlantic Coast. Those areas are increasingly flooded because of sea level rise.
The center petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service in April 2024 seeking to protect the bird under the Endangered Species Act, noting that its population has fallen 87%, from 212,000 individuals to about 28,200 in the last 30 years.
Under the law, the service is supposed to make an initial decision regarding the petition within 90 days, the group said in its lawsuit.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service has recognized that these sparrows are facing extinction, and we’re suing to force the agency to do something about it,” said Ryan Shannon, a senior attorney at the center. “Without protection of the Endangered Species Act the saltmarsh sparrow’s whisper-like song could disappear forever. The silence would be deafening.”
The group contends that without action, rising water and nest flooding could keep the birds from reproducing by 2060. Coastal development also threatens the birds in some areas.
It’s not the only marsh dwelling bird threatened by sea level rise. In 2020, the service listed the black rail, which occupies similar habitats, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. While a few saltmarsh sparrows remain around the Bay, surveys in recent years have no longer found black rails as rising water levels increasingly inundated nesting sites.