NY Times Op/Ed: "Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/opinion/19tue4.html

Editorial Observer
Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: June 19, 2007
Last week, the Audubon Society released a new report describing the sharp and startling population decline of some of the most familiar and common birds in America: several kinds of sparrows, the Northern bobwhite, the Eastern meadowlark, the common grackle and the common tern. The average decline of the 20 species in the Audubon Society’s report is 68 percent.

Forty years ago, there were an estimated 31 million bobwhites. Now there are 5.5 million. Compared to the hundred-some condors presently in the wild, 5.5 million bobwhites sounds like a lot of birds. But what matters is the 25.5 million missing and the troubles that brought them down — and are all too likely to bring down the rest of them, too. So this is not extinction, but it is how things look before extinction happens.

The word “extinct” somehow brings to mind the birds that seem like special cases to us, the dodo or the great auk or the passenger pigeon. Most people would never have had a chance to see dodos and great auks on their remote islands before they were decimated in the 17th and 19th centuries. What is hard to remember about passenger pigeons isn’t merely their once enormous numbers. It’s the enormous numbers of humans to whom their coming and going was a common sight and who supposed, erroneously, that such unending clouds of birds were indestructible. We recognize the extraordinary distinctness of the passenger pigeon now because we know its fate, killed off largely by humans. But we have moralized it thoroughly without ever really taking it to heart.

The question is whether we will see the distinctness of the field sparrow — its numbers down from 18 million to 5.8 million in the last 40 years — only when the last pair is being kept alive in a zoo somewhere. We love to finally care when the death watch is on. It makes us feel so very human.

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[dweller]

1. i think this has been pointed out before now, but

the message is becoming clearer . . . first the bees, then the birds.

for how long have humans used the metaphorical story of the birds and the bees to explain life to their offspring?

is Mother Earth now gently breaking the news to us in our own primitive, yet collective unconscious terms?
dp

[file83]

2. We are running the entire ecosystem into the ground.

100 more years of this and the planet will barely be recognizable.

[Canuckistanian]

3. I don't know about the other birds, but

I see field sparrows and grackles all the time.

But then again, I see the problems with anecdotal evidence vs. a real population count.

That's shocking to realize that such common birds could become extinct.

[Hissyspit]

4. I hear Bobwhites less and less where I live. (South NC)

Still hear all the Whipperwills, but Bobwhites, which I used to hear all the time, not so much any more.

[philb]

12. I live on a small farm; used to have lots; none seen in years

I live across the road from a Plantation mainly used for quail hunting in the past.
I never hear shotguns anymore. Guess they don't have quail either.

[NNadir]

13. You know, come to think of it, I haven't heard one in years.

I used to hear so many.

[ChrisF66]

5. Don't take away my birds and bees

Dammit!

On a more serious (and puzzled) note; the dodos and the auks wee hunted out, many others lost habitat and became inviable, but these birds are versatile species that used to be widespread and now seem to be in collapse without greatly increased predation or proportionally dramatic loss of habitat.

They're either losing the ability to reproduce, or they're dying (poison/disease/crappy GM food/birdIraq?) before they successfully reproduce.

Great. Here's hoping we're not joining them soon (still the eternal optimist, aren't I?)

[truedelphi]

6. I used to housesit in a building where birds

On their migratory routes crashed into the clear paned windows - sometimes half a dozen or more a day.

There was nothing unique about the building - so that meant that a half a dozen or more birds were crashing into the other buildings inthe neighborhood also.

Where i live now is becoming incresingly trasformed from farm lands and pastures to vineyards and casinos. The new vineyards rank among the most sterile looking places that I have ever seen - rows of twigs on their little metal trellises - and no brush or flowers or anything for hundreds of acres.
The owners of these properties want to discourage birds and animals so that the grape crops all go into wine bottles, not bird bellies.

[ChrisF66]

7. But the estimated lose levels...

are, what, 70%?

Have we really lost that much viable habitat in that short a time?

There has to be more to it than just habitat loss.

It's worse than that.

[ramapo]

8. It is worse than that

Most birds migrate so they are susceptible to habitat loss over an incredibly wide range. If they lose a stop over, they're screwed. If they lose their winter habitat, they're screwed. If they lose their summer habitat, they're screwed.

The bulldozers and chainsaw operate 24x7.

Then there's the matter of pollution, loss of supporting species and just the general destruction of all that is natural.

Notice that both the birds and the bees are in trouble. Very troubling, very sad. It's not easy to destroy an ecosystem but we seem to be very good at it.

[arenean]

9. Bee populations

I was watching the live BBC nature TV show, "Springwatch" last week, and the presenter said that if all the bees in the world disappeared tomorrow, then humans would follow within....well, I can't remember if he said it was 6 months, or 6 years, but it wasn't very long on a geological timescale....

[truedelphi]

10. He probably referenced the Einstein quote - of FOUR YEARS! n/t

[truedelphi]

11. Seventy per cent of many traditional crops are now GMO

Bt Corn and Bt cotton in testing killed butterflies.

RoundUp ready wheat and corn and rice. (This means that more RouidUp is sprayed than ever before)\
Who knows what a bellyful of insects that have consumed the altered food stuffs would do to the bird who consumes them?

In the USA, the large establishments like Monsanto only provide their OWN testing on the safety of their products (Unlike in Europe where the government is not yet so beholding to industry.)