Birding is a much (much) bigger industry than you knew

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

In 2022, around 96 million people in the U.S. closely observed, photographed or tried to identify birds in the wild—activities known broadly as birding. For context, that means more than 35 percent of the country’s population aged 16 and over are birders. 

It turns out this staggeringly popular hobby adds up, according to a November report from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS). The report found that birders in 2022 spent an estimated $107.6 billion on expenses related to their pursuits—from buying equipment like binoculars to travel costs for visiting bird hotspots. That’s almost six times the total revenue generated by the National Football League that year.  

This report shows that birding is a boon for local economies, a trend that can be seen around the world as the avian pastime continues to pick up steam and offers a sustainable revenue source for rural communities. But birders aren’t just chipping in financially; these hobbyists provide crucial data for scientists as climate change pummels global bird populations.

Breaking Down Birding: The new report is an addendum to the 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, published last year, which details the participation rate of Americans in recreational activities, including hunting, fishing and wildlife watching. For the addendum, FWS economist Erin Carver dove more deeply into birdwatching participation specifically to get a better understanding of the demographic and financial ins and outs of the activity in the U.S. 

I read through the report and wanted to highlight a few more of the key data points that stuck out. People in the U.S. spent a combined 7.5 billion days birding in 2022, with a range of destinations. Some birders might head out for long trips to see puffins in Alaska, while others simply watch warblers flit through their backyards. 

Birders were equally likely to be male or female. They’re also most likely to be older, wealthy and white, a common criticism of the birdwatching space, though advocates are working to make the hobby more diverse, The Narwhal reports. 

Of the nearly $108 billion total expenditures, birders spent the majority on equipment, according to the new report. This category includes the cost of purchased or leased property used for the primary purpose of observing, photographing or feeding birds. Avid birders don’t mess around when it comes to wildlife-watching equipment, often shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for expensive binoculars and top-of-the-line cameras.

Trip-related expenses also made up a large portion of national birding costs. A single rare bird showing up somewhere can boost a regional economy. For example, when a Steller’s Sea-Eagle spent a month soaring along the New England coast in the winter of 2021-22, birders funneled around $750,000 into the economies of Maine and Massachusetts, a 2023 study estimated. 

The new report emphasized that birding-related purchases can bolster the entire supply chain, helping support 1.4 million jobs and generating about $90 billion in salaries and wages in 2022. 

“In addition to the many ecosystem services that birds provide, birds also act as powerful economic engines,” Amanda Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told me over email. “This report reminds us that what is good for birds is usually good for people too.”

It’s not just the U.S. reaping these birding benefits. Birding has soared in Colombia following a peace agreement between rebels and the country’s government in 2016, which opened up once off-limits or unsafe areas to tourists. As Vox’s Benji Jones recently reported, this industry has also unlocked new income streams for rural communities and incentivized the protection of forests—key bird habitats—in Colombia. Experts caution that ecotourism can often be harmful to wildlife or communities if it is scaled up too quickly or outsourced to foreign companies, but so far, Colombia’s birding movement has been mostly local. 

“You can’t do this business without conserving,” Javier Rubio, who runs a birdwatching destination called La Florida at his property in Colombia, told Vox. “If you don’t conserve, you put your future as a business at risk. If you start cutting down trees and damaging the forest, [the birds] will be left without food, which is the reason why they are here.” 

Citizen Scientists: Climate change, pollution, habitat loss and other stressors have driven a roughly 30 percent decline of North American bird populations since 1970, according to a 2019 study led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In other cases, birds are shifting the timing or location of their seasonal migrations in response to warming temperatures. 

Birders have witnessed these changes firsthand. 

“We’re seeing declines in species, both in terms of birds that breed here in Canada and migrants passing through,” Yousif Attia, a birding guide with Eagle Eye Tours in British Columbia, told The Globe and Mail. He added that these shifting patterns make it harder to plan birdwatching expeditions. 

Birding observations provide insight for animal researchers and policymakers when determining the most crucial areas to protect for avian conservation. Technology has helped “citizen scientists” report their findings. A number of apps such as eBird, BirdNET and Merlin have been developed in recent years to help birders identify different species by their appearance or calls, which has also yielded a wealth of data, researchers say. For a 2022 study, scientists led by Cornell found that BirdNET submissions were highly accurate for mapping out the migratory routes of several North American and European birds. 

Saturday officially marks the start of one of the largest and most long-standing birdwatching initiatives that takes place each year: the Christmas Bird Count. Now on its 125th year, the count tasks volunteer birders (no experience necessary) around the Western Hemisphere to document the birds they see on each calendar day from Dec. 14 to Jan. 15. This data has been used in hundreds of analyses, peer-reviewed publications and government reports, according to The Audubon Society, which leads the event.

“People are devoted to spending a cold winter day counting birds because it’s a great tradition” for personal and scientific reasons, Pepper Trail, a 71-year-old retired ornithologist in Oregon, told Oregon Live. He completed his first Christmas count at age 9.