The Biofuels Binge: A Threat to Birds and No Solution for Global Warming

Ironically, in a push for a “greener” economy in Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, and other countries, the demand for biofuels is accelerating tropical forest destruction, eliminating wildlife habitat and releasing their vital carbon store, thereby accelerating global warming. In Colombia, biodiverse and largely unprotected lowland forests are threatened by plans launched by the Colombian government to swiftly expand biofuel production, much of it for export. The government aims to open 20 biofuel plants within the next decade, and plans to convert 7.4 million acres of primary forests of the Chocó and Amazon regions, home to such rare and declining birds as the Great Green Macaw, Blue-billed Curassow, and Recurve-billed Bushbird.

Recurve-billed Bushbird. Photo by Fundación ProAves, www.proaves.org

The U.S. is already importing a portion of the biofuels now in use and the recent requirements in the Energy Bill to greatly expand its use will lead to still more imports from tropical countries such as Colombia. The cost in terms of increased carbon emissions and the destruction of the world’s dwindling biodiversity is far too high. This threat needs to be immediately addressed by Congress before more tropical rainforests and the wildlife they harbor are destroyed. We should be protecting forest to store carbon, not cutting it down and burning it.

Converting large amounts of cropland for biofuel production will also result in loss of high-value bird habitats in the United States such as wetlands, wet meadows, grasslands and scrub. There is evidence this is already happening. Enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program, which offers farmers payment to conserve highly erodible cropland, fell two million acres in 2007 because these lands were put back in production.

Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota lost 800,000 of those acres, including parts of the Prairie Pothole Region in the upper Midwest and Canada. The region is unique because of its millions of small, seasonal wetlands that dot the landscape, gouged out by glaciers in ice ages past. It is the interspersion of grassland and wetland that makes the region home to a vast and diverse array of birds, from grassland passerines such as Baird’s Sparrow and Sprague’s Pipit, to the millions of waterfowl, marsh, and shorebirds that nest in or pass through during migration. Converting lands in the Prairie Potholes Region and other grasslands to biofuels production will harm birds that depend on these areas and it will not help address global warming.

A wetland at sunset. Photo by National Biological Information Infrastructure.

The journal Science published two new studies that found corn-based ethanol produces more greenhouse gases than gasoline, and that biofuels are not a good solution to the global warming crisis because of the huge carbon loss caused when land is deforested in order to put it into fuel production. The UK’s Guardian newspaper reports that another recent study of 26 biofuels found that 12 had greater total environmental impacts than fossil fuels. These included fuels such as corn ethanol, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol, soy diesel, and Malaysian palm-oil diesel. Biofuels that fared best were those produced from waste products such as recycled cooking oil, as well as ethanol from grass or wood. For additional information on how biofuel production is creating a global biodiversity crisis, see the recent Greenpeace report “How the Palm Oil Industry is Cooking the Planet” at www.greenpeace.org.

For more information on the impact of global warming on birds, see American Bird Conservancy’s factsheet at http://www.abcbirds.org/conservationissues/globalwarming/global_warming_factsheet.pdf