Just got through reading author and birder Jonathan Franzen’s essay in the New Yorker about climate change and conservation. We were hardly a hundred words into the article -- thinking "Hey, how cool is it that this super-famous guy is talking about bird conservation in the New Yorker!" -- when we suddenly found Audubon taking all kinds of flak about, egads, our concern about the impacts of climate change on birds. As though doing research on the topic and taking steps to do something about it are, kinda, bad for birds.

By the time we got to the end, all we could think was: What is up, Jonathan Franzen?

To make his point, Franzen refers to a Minnesota newspaper blogger who wrote that if global warming is such a threat to birds, why should anyone care about a few thousand killed by the glass walls of the new Minnesota Viking Stadium? Franzen launches from this to say, "What upset me was how a dire prophecy like Audubon’s could lead to indifference toward birds in the present.” Franzen's reaction is baffling, because normally when we encounter people with this sort of "indifference," they're the ones offering self-serving rhetorical questions like: Why should we ban lead ammunition when wind turbines are killing so many birds already? Why should we care about oil spills when clear-cutting is already wiping out birds in Central America? Why should we save the California Condor when, you know, evolution? Any decent conservationist -- heck, any person with half a brain -- can explain why this is specious nonsense. What should have "upset" Franzen upon reading that blogger wasn't that the man had a point, but that he didn't.

But nothing in this piece has us more confused than Franzen's frequent descriptions of Audubon as an organization so "seduced" by the siren song of climate change that we've forgotten to do "energetic" bird conservation that saves birds in the Now (He also says some mean stuff about our plush toys -- oh the humanity!). He doesn't mention that the Minnesota blogger was responding to a hailstorm of national activism brought forth by Audubon Minnesota and the National Audubon Society. And he also overlooks all the "regular" bird saving going on in his home state of California. Just year before last, Audubon California successfully took on the National Rifle Association to remove lead from hunting ammunition that was killing Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles, California Condors and a host of other birds. And let's add Tricolored Blackbirds, Western Snowy Plovers, Owens Lake, Working Lands conservation, the Kern River Valley, the Brown Pelican, drought, San Francisco Bay, California Gnatcatcher and our extensive body of work fighting to make sure that renewable energy is sited properly to avoid unnecessary impacts on our birds. And really that's just the beginning. Seriously, we can go all day.

And we managed to do all this while also doing something about climate change. Conservation groups have long understood the difference between proximate and ultimate threats, and few would suggest that we deal with one and not the other. We know how to walk and chew gum at the same time, because any decent conservation organization has to. Because there isn't a difference between old-fashioned bird conservation and this new-fangled climate change bird conservation. It's all the same thing.

(California Condor photo by David Clendenon/USFWS)