Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850.
Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Dec 8;117(49):30900-30906. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2013568117. Epub 2020 Nov 24.
Massive wildlife losses over the past 50 y have brought new urgency to identifying both the drivers of population decline and potential solutions. We provide large-scale evidence that air pollution, specifically ozone, is associated with declines in bird abundance in the United States. We show that an air pollution regulation limiting ozone precursors emissions has delivered substantial benefits to bird conservation. Our estimates imply that air quality improvements over the past 4 decades have stemmed the decline in bird populations, averting the loss of 1.5 billion birds, ∼20% of current totals. Our results highlight that in addition to protecting human health, air pollution regulations have previously unrecognized and unquantified conservation cobenefits.
在过去的 50 年中，野生动物数量的大规模减少使得确定种群减少的驱动因素和潜在解决方案变得更加紧迫。我们提供了大规模的证据，表明空气污染，特别是臭氧，与美国鸟类数量的减少有关。我们表明，限制臭氧前体排放的空气污染法规已经为鸟类保护带来了实质性的好处。我们的估计表明，在过去的 40 年中，空气质量的改善遏制了鸟类种群的减少，避免了 15 亿只鸟类的损失，约占当前总数的 20%。我们的研究结果表明，除了保护人类健康外，空气污染法规还具有以前未被认识到和量化的保护协同效益。
