Climate Change Threatens Birds with Mass Extinction:

[amborin]

"....Future climate change threatens California's birds with massive range reductions and, in extreme cases, statewide extirpations and global extinctions," asserted William B. Monahan and Gary Langham, authors of the paper.

The California projections came as the National Audubon Society released the most comprehensive study ever done on dramatic shifts in the range of birds nationwide, based on 40 years of data from its annual Christmas bird count. The count is a massive effort in which 50,000 volunteers nationwide record the numbers of birds at 2,000 locations.

Now computerized, the data show that 58% of the 305 most common North American species have shifted their ranges northward and inland by an average of 35 miles in the last 40 years. Some of the shifts have been extreme: the purple finch, once most common in Missouri, moved more than 300 miles north, toward Canada.


In California, more than 100 species have moved significantly north. The red-breasted nuthatch, the house finch, the pine siskin and the varied thrush all shifted their range more than 200 miles. The golden-crowned sparrow and the California quail have moved more than 100 miles...."

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<http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-birds11-2009feb11,0,6140696.story>

[cliffordu]

1. If the birds go the meek (the bugs) will inherit the earth fer sher...