We want to celebrate the historic wins we created together in 2019. We are deeply grateful for the dedicated advocacy and generous donations from our supporters that literally saved millions of California’s birds this year. You make wins for birds possible!

In this year’s biggest victory, the California Migratory Bird Protection Act was signed into law. This Audubon-sponsored bill ensures that migratory birds will continue to have state-based protections despite federal rollbacks of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Audubon supporters sent over 5,000 letters and 100 advocates visited the State Capitol to urge legislators to pass this bill. Together, we defended millions of migratory birds in California. 

California made history by implementing the nation’s first 100 percent lead ammunition ban. This law protect raptors like California Condors and Bald Eagles from deadly lead poisoning. This victory was twelve years in the making, starting with the first lead ammo ban in condor habitat in 2007. Working with a broad coalition and hundreds of thousands of supporters, we successfully passed legislation to ban lead ammo across California once and for all.

Threatened Tricolored Blackbirds had a phenomenal breeding season in the spring. With your support, we established partnerships with farmers in the Central Valley to delay harvests in sileage fields where the birds were nesting. This gave the chicks six weeks to fledge and successfully fly off the nest. In total, we saved 90 percent of nesting colonies and 178,500 Tricolored Blackbirds.

The California Fish and Game Commission adopted a first-of-its-kind Fishery Management Plan for Pacific herring, becoming one of the most sustainable fisheries in the nation for this vital forage fish. For the past seven years, Audubon worked to design this plan with herring fishermen, Oceana, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Audubon supporters delivered thousands of letters and we protected a key food source for millions of seabirds.

A federal court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to remove the imperiled coastal California Gnatcatcher from the Endangered Species Act list, ensuring protection for this tiny songbird and its coastal sage scrub habitat. The decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia came after years of attempts by developers to delist the species. The National Audubon Society and partner organizations intervened to retain federal protections for this rare bird.