Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiWASHINGTON - Some of the nation's most common birds are disappearing at alarming rates.
While loss of such habitat as fringe forests, grasslands and wetlands is believed to be the culprit, there are mounting concerns that global warming could be starting to take a toll.
Over the past 40 years, populations of the northern bobwhite are down 82 percent and have virtually vanished from parts of its range. Populations of evening grosbeaks and northern pintail have dropped by nearly 78 percent, greater scaups by 75 percent and Eastern meadowlarks by 71 percent, according to a new Audubon Society analysis of bird count and breeding records.
"These are not rare or exotic birds we are talking about - these are birds that visit our feeders and congregate at nearby lakes and seashores, yet they are disappearing year by year," said Carol Browner, Audubon chairman and a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator. "Their decline tells us we have serious work to do, from protecting local habitats to addressing the huge threats from global warming."
After reviewing data from its annual Christmas Bird Count and the U.S. Geological Survey's annual Breeding Bird Survey, Audubon published a list of 20 birds whose populations have fallen by more than half since 1967. Other birds on the list include whippoorwills, common terns, snow buntings, little blue herons and Rufous hummingbirds. (Detailed information on the analysis along with audio of the birds' calls is available at www.audubon.org.)
The declines aren't uniform across the nation. In Washington state, evening grosbeak populations are down 97 percent.
"I haven't seen an evening grosbeak in my backyard this year," Nina Carter, executive director of Audubon Washington, said of a bird that was a frequent visitor in years past to her Olympia, Wash., neighborhood. "What's happened is pretty incredible."
Though Carter said she's often been accused of overusing the phrase, she likens the drop in the number of common birds to a "canary in the coal mine." Miners used to carry canaries into the mines. If the birds died, the miners knew poisonous gases were building up in the shafts.
"This isn't so much about the birds, though that is important," Carter said. "It's what it means for people, for the environmental health of our communities."
Nationally, critical common bird habitat is under pressure from urban sprawl, energy development and even the nation's drive to grow more crops for biofuel, Audubon found.
Suitable habitat for the northern bobwhite is shrinking. The prairie pothole breeding ground of the northern pintail is disappearing because of expanded agricultural activity. Wetland loss and degraded water quality are affecting the food supply of little blue herons, and greater scaup populations are affected by the melting of the northern permafrost.
Meanwhile, such suburban species as geese, robins, crows and some populations of gull are thriving, said Greg Butcher, who headed the Audubon analysis.
"Some of these are getting more abundant than we would like," he said.
Butcher said he doesn't expect any of the common birds to go extinct, but added that steps need to be taken to protect them, including dealing with the challenges of global warming.
"We know a number of species, robins, bluebirds, crows, are wintering farther north," Butcher said. "It's a clear signal they are responding to global warming. We've seen it, but (global warming effects) are hard to quantify. My guess is we will find it."
While clean air, clean water, land use and global warming are often bound up in politics, Carter said individuals can take such simple steps as planting more native plants in their yards or cleaning their bird feeders regularly before the feed can spoil and turn moldy.
"This analysis give us a baseline to track this problem," she said. "It also helps us understand the clear connection between birds and habitat and our communities."
2007 McClatchy Newspapers
22 Comments so far
Show AllAnyone read any articles about DU? It's the most serious problem on this planet, worse than GWB. It is!
Great point dingoboy.
Evelyn Smith,
The hardest thing for me is to realize our worst predictions are coming true. Thus I think there should already be a very active organization to stop the corporate rapists in their tracks - and there is not! They cannot even bring themselves to impeach those two criminals in the White House! So, it looks to me like a suicide pact between we the people and the corporations whose consumer lifestyle we are all addicted to. We're all in Koyaanisqatsi.
Evelyn Smith,
That's the kicker. The grandchildren will hate us all, before they die, because we refused to face the reality of too many people grabbing too much, and we refused to do anything dramatic to stop it, instead flocking to Las Vegas and Disneyland.
ENTELECHY: You are absolutely correct and I seriously doubt humanity will do a damn thing about it. Think I'll move to Las Vegas and have as much fun as possible, live it up and quit reading Common Dreams and or worring about things that are depressing. I don't know what our grandkids thing about it, they may care.
Nobody mentions the fact that while bird populations are dramatically declining, human populations are dramatically increasing. It goes like this: More humans = less birds. Less humans = more birds. But of course, nobody wants to stop the growing economy, which must be fed by a growing population of low-wage workers. So, bye-bye rainforests, bye-bye birds, bye-bye animals, and bye-bye living planet Earth. Where then will the rich men spend their billions?!
Hi there Paul M. Smith, I agree with much of what you write. However, the decline of many specie of birds is "dramatic", and that has occurred in just the past eighteen months in our area of this little world and we now read it is a world wide problem.
If the published facts about what has occurred to the troops in the Gulf war are accurate, and I recall you have previously stated they are, that is an epidemic which you rightfully stated, scares the crap out of you. The truth is, we have no idea of how much depleted uranium has been turned to microscopic powder and some is now drifting in the airways of Earth. Tons of it have been scattered for certain; how many tons?
Birds are not able to handle that poison as well as humans. All poisons certainly effect bird life much more quickly, that's why birds were used in mines, to warn the humans working there. No one is certain of what is causing the DRAMATIC loss of birds on Earth. It most certainly is a warnig for humanity that there is a mst serious problem, which may be from the idiotic use of depleted uranium. Cats? Big problem, Windmills? Another problem. Bird strikes on glass windows and vehicles is a problem. Those problems are not the reason for the SUDDEN and DRAMATIC decline of bird life in every part of the planet. What is the reason?
We have been spreading depleted uranium into the air now for many years, even before the first Gulf war it was being used by our military on gunnery ranges in the states and on ranges in other countries. Tons of it was fired and scattered in the first, and now many more tons in the present Gulf war.
But perhaps you are correct Paul, maybe DU is not the bird problem. I do believe it should be thoroughly investigated, while keeping in mind, depleted uranium dust will kill birds quickly, but wwhen it gets into our children's lungs, the horrible diseases it can cause, will not show up for several years. And as you previously wrote, DU lodges in the male sperm and two thirds of the children born to those vets effected, were born with serious medical problems and or with deformities. "Two thirds is an epidemic". There are many "hot spots", cities in the US where the dramatic rise in cancer cases in children is a most seriouus problem. That medical problem isn't being caused by windmills or stray cats. The birds are dying and it is a warning which I doubt will be heeded or taken seriously by many. That is a Shame.
One thing this article fails to mention is that the common housecat is one of the main reasons for the decline in songbirds. There
are an estimated 75 million cats in North America. Conservative estimates say each one kills a bird a week. That's 75 million birds per
week. PLEASE KEEP YOUR CATS INDOORS. They are hard-wired to kill things, even when they aren't hungry and coming originally from Egypt,
they have no natural place in our food chain. Declawing does not solve the problem as they can catch with their paws and kill with their
teeth. Many scientists say they are the number one cause of songbird decline. Please give your cats toys and keep them indoors.
As a youth in northern Delaware (in the fifties) I remember seeing masses of migrating birds each fall. This trek of perhaps millions of birds would darken the sky stretching from horizon to horizon heading south for the winter. I now live about 200 miles south of there, and granted this may be on a different migratory route, but the flocks are greatly reduced to only a few thousand at most. Where did they all go?
While I understand DU (depleted uranium) has the potential to eradicate ALL forms of life down to a microbial level on this planet I would imagine it is only one of the causes of extinctions we now face. Besides, I don't think it has been in common usage by the military long enough to cause the widespread damage we now face to earth's flora & fauna. Above ground tests of nuclear weapons is likely another factor with similar damage to DNA structures.
The fact of the matter is nuclear technology is so relatively new that despite what we THINK we know we actually know very little about the long term ecological effects of mankind mucking about on an atomic level.
One thing is readily apparent, though. We are putting ourselves at risk by above ground nuclear tests and shooting radioactive materials at each other.
Aside from the potential damage to life on this planet, even a rudimentary cost/benefit analysis from a financial perspective reveals weaponry utilizing radioactive materials to be a losing proposition.
You heard right collingrivers. It is not at all likely, but it is possible. Don't know what global warmig effects may have on the subject. If those poisonous gasses do erupt from the ocean's depths, we will have no control over it. We can control the use of posions which we are currently using, which if not stopped may end life on Earth as we know it. End it for thousands of years. Ask for enriched uranium on a website. Sacry!
"Man must change or die.
There is no other course."
Maitreya, the World Teacher
http://www.Share-International.org
The other day, there was an interview on a Canadian radio station (I didn't hear it, it's getting passed about, but I've read something about this recently as well), with a scientist discussing how at ANY TIME, the ocean water temperatures that keep the lower levels of toxic gases could bubble up to the surface and wipe out life as we know it, that this sort of thing occured in the past, with "die-offs" as a result- well before the last major "die-off", the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs.
We all better start saying our last good-byes now.
KAYAJER; You've brought up some excellent points. I don't believe my points were just hot air however. Please check out "depleted uranium" uses and see the immediate dangers for yourself. It is a most serious problem which is not going to go away anytime soon, it's not hot air, it's microscopic radioactive dust that can easily kill birds and permanently disable babies, children and adults, until it finally kills them.
As someone here mentioned, canaries were used in mines for the human's safety, when the birds fell over, it was time to run. Well, the birds are falling over, dead. It's time to act, there is no place to run to.
Of the 600,000 ground troops which served in the first Gulf war, two thirds are now permanently disabled and two thirds of the children born to them were born with serious medical problems and or with defromities. That is an epidemic our government is attempting to hide. Imagine that.
The so called "Gulf War Syndrome" vets have, has been limked (by several scientific groups), as caused from inhaling radioactive dust from depleted uranium. Tons of it were spread over the ME and more tons in America. The troops in the second war with Iraq will be in the same shape, just give it a little more time, it usually takes four or five years for the horrible symptoms and disabling effects to show up. Some places in downtown Baghdad have radiation levels almost 2,000 times the normal background levels. The wind has deposited some of that dust on the East Coast of the US. Check it out, I'm not grinding an ax, just repeating what I've learned from reliable sources.
Audubon Society does not discourage flying around the world in jet airplanes to check off a few more birds on your lifelist. In fact, they offer many trips themselves on 'private jets'. We all talk a good game but we all contribute needlessly to global warming (including myself) and we all know that most of the talk about doing something to stop it is just 'hot air'.
Shortly the human species will be the "canaries in the coal mine"....
"Bye bye human race, you blew it"....
The reality is even if carbon emissions were theoretically remained at 2007 levels, by 2050 global temp would increase by 2-3 degrees centigrade. That's Centigrade not Fahrenheit.
Global warming is currently a run away train.....
It's just now a question of what version of HELL on earth do you fancy. Global warming and Climate change is happening MUCH faster than Bu$hCo understands or knows i.e. TOTAL DENIAL!!!!
...and at the same time, states spend time and resources on the management and stock production of game birds.
There is timber and crop and game and fish management and then there is habitat. USDA, DNR and state Fish and Wildlife/Game are effectively the wardens of this country's lands and how and who gets to use them.
There could be a push to promote management and migration of potential endangered species. Global warming is happening, and the animals who aren't capable of migrating and adapting fast enough will not survive... so if their survival is left up to humans....
We all have to spread this information to everyone we can. That includes the dunderheads and dittoheads. They, after all, have children too. The need for parents to make sure that their children live in a world at least as beautiful as the one they grew up in, is a strong instinct - they just need to know that they have to act on it now.
so much for the oft quoted "intelligent design" basis of human activities. at least animals kill for food while humans kill for what.....
ironic or is it incomprehensible that societies adhere to a better "afterlife" on faith while their present existance/lives are destroyed by arrogance and ignorance.
maybe the french were right all along in saying "c'est la vie".
Ironically, windmill generators are killing many birds. I wonder why we can't build them with large, slow turning, perhaps canvas covered blades like high tech Dutch windmills but with a lot of torque instead of the sexy faster spinning bird-killing windmills we have now.
Also, I was putting some ant poison pellets I bought at Home Depot on some fire ant hills once and soon afterwards I saw a the family of cardinals that resided in our back yard, eating them. I never saw them again.
This article makes no mention of pesticides, among the greatest killer of birds. (see Silent Spring) I guess McClatchy Newspapers don't want to upset their pesticide advertisers. Another reason to chain the corporate beasts.
I've mentioned this before, we live in a high elevation valley in the SW mountains. Up until last fall, we had hundreds of birds stop here, there is a mountain stream and we've always fed the birds. We've always counted over 70 specie durng a single year.
No more, down to 11 specie this year and some of those are only one or two birds, not thirty or more. Instead of dozens of humming birds of all types, we now have seen five this year, just five hummers.
Something is terribly wrong and I do believe it MAY be from the "depleted uranium" used in munitions in Iraq, Afgan, etc. and here in the US on military gunnery ranges. That deadly poison is now being blown all over the planet. It is deadly for centuries.
Click on a website and ask for depleted uranium if you like scary stuff. It'scary to me and read what is happening to the vets and their children who were in the first Gulf War. When poisons start being spread around, the birds and amphibians are the first to feel the effects, finally humans and especially fetuses next.
When I grew up in south Florida in the 50s and early 60s the sky would be dark with migrating birds. When I left Florida in 74, this was not so.
I was being facecious entelechy, I do care as you do. LIke you wrote, bye-bye world as if you had maybe given up, which I'm sure you have not. Me neither! Read my previous blogs. I agree with what you wrote, it's a mess and hourly it gets worse. Did you see what is happening to that once beautiful Madascar? It is ruined, by humanity, forever! Same as the rain forests in the Amazon region and in vast land areas of Africa. When the astronats circle the Earth, they state is a world on fire. That is what they can see, monstrous fires all around the planet, fires to clear forests. Will it stop? Hasn't for over thirty years. Time is running out for us and especially for our kids. Again, I agree totally with what you first wrote.