[masklinn]

> The main drivers I think are plain habitat loss

Fragmentation is also an issue people don't think enough about. You see percentages of forested ground and think "well that looks pretty good" but when you go check it out it's disparate strands with fields inbetween, or thin rows of trees a few meters wide. This means only "edge" species have a habitat, and even for them their domain is not really a boundary with a flux between different ecosystems anymore, they've got identical open areas on both sides. It also means the bigger species don't have the room to live there anymore.

[goda90]

Going to public school in Wisconsin, I remember being taught about fragmentation and how it let brood parasites like cowbirds have better access to the nests they sneak their eggs into, which leads to the death of lots of chicks from other species. Wisconsin still has lots of forest, but with so many roads and fields cutting through them, they just can't support the same level of wildlife.