Common birds bring economic vitality to cities, new study finds

Is it worth having birds in the city? If you live in Seattle or Berlin, the answer is yes, to the tune of $120 million and $70 million a year for each city, respectively. A new study published last month in the journal Urban Ecosystems tries to determine what economic value residents in two comparable cities place on having birds in their backyards and parks. Researchers at the University of Washington and Humboldt State University compared two types of common birds - finches and corvids - in both cities, asking residents how much they would pay to conserve the species and what they spend, if anything, on bird food. They found that both cities place a "sizeable” value on bird enjoyment, somewhat more so in Seattle. Residents in both cities spend more than the average U.S. adult on bird-supporting activities, suggesting that people from Seattle and Berlin value having birds around their homes and neighborhoods more than in most cities. These activities, in turn, also show that birds benefit the local economies as residents invest in food and nesting structures. "This paper shows that our interactions with birds actually have a pretty high economic return to the community where you live,” said John Marzluff , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences and the paper's co-author.