There were 56 wild, endangered Puerto Rican parrots living around El Yunque National Forest before Hurricane Maria in 2017. After the storm, there was only one survivor. 'I'll admit that a couple of times I just cried,' said Tom White, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who's been working for 30 years to re-establish a wild Puerto Rican parrot population at El Yunque.
Some of the largest declines, according to a landmark study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, are happening in the most common types of birds. The study looked at population decline between 1970 and 2019 and found major losses of: Wood thrushes, found across the eastern U.S.; 60% of them are gone. Baltimore orioles, also an eastern bird; two-fifths have been lost. Western meadowlarks, prevalent in the central and western U.S.; three-fourths have disappeared.