ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today to protect the distinct North American subspecies of the gray-headed chickadee under the Endangered Species Act. The gray-headed chickadee may be the continent’s rarest and most imperiled resident bird, with the last confirmed sighting in 2017 in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“Even North America’s toughest chickadee is no match for the compounding climate disruption that’s hammering the Arctic, and these birds need all the help they can get right now,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re careening off an extinction cliff at the top of the continent as we fail to protect our public lands and confront the oil industry’s relentless push for more drilling. The decline of the gray-headed chickadee is a flashing red light telling us we need to rapidly course correct.”

The gray-headed chickadee lives year-round in the far northern Arctic in Alaska and Canada. A combination of rapidly shifting environmental pressures is driving this unique North American subspecies toward extinction.

Rapid warming is disrupting the timing of the Arctic spring, potentially causing the birds to nest out of sync with the seasonal burst of insect abundance they need to feed their young. Additionally, rising temperatures and increased winter rains instead of snow can spoil the caches of food chickadees rely on for winter survival and challenge their ability to regulate body temperature. A warming climate also allows other historically southern chickadee species and birds to expand their ranges northward into gray-headed chickadee habitat.

“Arctic birds, bugs, and plants that form the rich tapestry of life at the base of the ecosystem drive the whole show, but that tapestry is unraveling,” said Freeman. “The dramatic decline of the gray-headed chickadee is deeply concerning for the future of the Arctic as we know it. Extinction is forever and each loss of a unique species like the gray-headed chickadee impoverishes our world and erases thousands of years of evolutionary history. We have to take rapid action to conserve these birds and the places they still live before it’s too late.”

While the gray-headed chickadee’s northern habitat is largely intact, extractive industrial projects like the proposed Ambler Road threaten to degrade and fragment what remains viable. The 211-mile road would facilitate the construction and operation of future destructive mining projects while crossing over 3,000 streams or rivers through preferred chickadee habitats.

Despite significant conservation concern for the chickadee, no coordinated plan exists to protect, study or locate the bird. Urgent Endangered Species Act resources for locating and studying any remaining gray-headed chickadees and protecting the habitats they still occupy are needed to help avoid its extirpation in North America.