The industrial noise from oil and gas operations is causing nearby birds to develop stress responses similar to people with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a new University of Colorado study.
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found some impacted birds have chicks whose growth is stunted. Others like western bluebirds lay fewer eggs that hatch when nested near the chronic, human-caused noise that researchers compared to the sounds of highway traffic.
“In what we consider to be the most integrated study of the effects of noise pollution on birds to date, we found that it can significantly impact both their stress hormones and their fitness,” said lead author Nathan Kleist, who conducted the field research from 2010 to 2014 and graduated with a doctoral degree in evolutionary biology in May. “Surprisingly, we also found that the species we assumed to be most tolerant to noise had the most negative effects.”
The research consisted of following western and mountain bluebirds and ash-throated flycatchers for three breeding seasons.
Kleist and his crew constructed 240 nest boxes on 12 pairs of sites for the cavity-nesting birds, which breed near oil and gas operations on Bureau of Land Management property in New Mexico.
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