I'll note that ECCC is very familiar with this paper. In fact, it was the Canadian Wildlife Service analysis of data obtained from citizen science over the past half-century that was used in the paper published in 2019 in the highly respected international journal Science, which estimated the loss of about 30% of the total bird population in North America.
That means that there are about three billion fewer individual birds in North America than there were in 1970, which is a stark statistic. This information was important in terms of targeting needed urgent conservation attention in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, including targeting the declines of shorebirds, grassland birds and aerial insectivores. I would probably add that it is through the efforts of the North American breeding bird survey's many citizen scientists that we are able to monitor and assess the decline of bird populations across North America.
Over to you, Jennifer.