Our country’s most important bird-protection law—the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)—has been severely weakened. A rollback was scheduled to take effect on February 8 but it is being fully reassessed by the U.S. Department of the Interior and a public comment period is now open until March 1.
Congress passed this landmark law in 1918, which placed all migratory birds under federal protection. The MBTA safeguards birds by making it unlawful to kill, hunt, sell, or possess most native species of birds in the U.S., along with their nests, eggs, and feathers. Harmful proposals in Congress started in 2017 with new interpretations of the MBTA law that would reverse decades of policy that holds companies accountable for preventable bird deaths through incidental take.
Despite bipartisan opposition, the outgoing administration finalized a rule in early January to try to make this policy permanent giving industries a free pass to kill birds. Under this new interpretation of the MBTA law, if an oil spill were to hit the shoreline, those responsible would no longer pay a fine for any related bird deaths, limiting our ability to help birds recover from the spill.
Further undermining the MBTA clearly would be detrimental to birds and the habitats that we aim to protect. Now more than ever, we need to defend this important bird protection law.
