Millions of Missing Birds, Vanishing in Plain Sight
Sign In to E-Mail or Save This Print Share
DiggFacebookNewsvinePermalink

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 comings and goings were 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 number is down from 18 million 40 years ago to 5.8 million — 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.

Like you, I’ve been reading dire reports of declining species for many years now. They have the value of causing us to pay attention to species in trouble, and the sad fact is that the only species likely to endure are the ones we humans manage to pay attention to. There was a time when it was better, if you were a nonhuman species, to be ignored by humans because we trapped, shot or otherwise exploited all of the ones that got our attention. But in the past 40 years, we have killed all those millions of birds or, let us say, unintentionally caused a dramatic population loss, simply by going about business as usual.

Agriculture has intensified. So has development. Open space has been sharply reduced. We have simply pursued our livelihoods. We knew it was inimical to wolves and mountain lions. But we somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.

The Audubon Society portrait of common bird species in decline is really a report on who humans are. Let me offer a proposition about Homo sapiens. We are the only species on earth capable of an ethical awareness of other species and, thus, the only species capable of happily ignoring that awareness. So far, our economic interests have proved to be completely incompatible with all but a very few forms of life. It’s not that we believe that other species don’t matter. It’s that, historically speaking, it hasn’t been worth believing one way or another. I don’t suppose that most Americans would actively kill a whippoorwill if they had the chance. Yet in the past 40 years its number has dropped by 1.6 million.

In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth. E.O. Wilson has argued eloquently and persuasively that we cannot, that who we are depends as much on the richness and diversity of the biological life around us as it does on any inherent quality in our genes. Environmentalists of every stripe argue that we must somehow begin to correlate our economic behavior — by which I mean every aspect of it: production, consumption, habitation — with the welfare of other species.

This is the premise of sustainability. But the very foundation of our economic interests is self-interest, and in the survival of other species we see way too little self to care.

The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself.

We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/opinion/...hoo&emc=rss

We're selfish, inconsiderate and destructive... We'll sacrifice our life support system in the name of obscene greed. Did I mention we're insane? That too.

Very chilling. Do you think we're too far gone to change things around? I think it's a hopeless effort, now. There are just too many destructive forces in motion.

So what's killing the birds? Nature occasionally has a selective way of terminating species, which was occuring long before human kind was around.

From what I have been able to gather some of it has to do with suburban sprawl and habitat loss. It seems like the birds that specialize in their feeding and habitat choices are the ones fairing worst. Also foreign species are taking up the niches once held by some of these species. My Biology professor said that many birds have problems with all the wireless crap we got floating around...messes with their ability to keep their bearings. Thanks wireless phones and internet.
A link to another article on the bird decline
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19225721/

Honestly have noticed an upswing in the number of birds in my neighborhood...I grew up here and I am seeing birds here now that were never here before and many more birds period...not that this changes the decline but maybe some of them are shifting their home turf so maybe it isn't quite so bad as it sounds...although I doubt it.

That sums up the human race these days. We have so much power but so many people out there dont think how it can help people, or at least those in high power think more of how they can greed of it we simply forget the surroundings outside. Its like karma though, all those people knocking down forests etc for the sake of gaining money in development sites will just see the numbers of animals die down until their announced extinct. But what makes it even more sad is that all these big corporate big bosses wont blink an eyelid, theyll be far more concerned on the size of their bank balance. This world is becoming all to scary, especially with the way things are going.

but this isn't natural selection , this is man made by encrouchment.

keep killing off the birds and we'll find ourselves being taken over by insects.

I have see a drastic decrease in the bird life here in Florida since I came here 25 years ago. Lose of habitat, pesticides, pollution and poor land management are the big culprits. Mostly we are taking their homes and poisoning them. It is only a matter of time when we wake up to silence

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

It's because they are all scared of the Roosterigeon!!

Kill it before it kills us all

What Ripley said....human encroachment

My term for it....too many people

I'm all for getting rid of a few billion...can we start with my ex?

Funky.

Here in Southern California I noticed an increase in larger birds and less smaller ones. There are more black birds than there was twenty years ago and I see them raiding smaller bird nest for the eggs.

I think there is something we can do?! What I mean is we live in apartment complex and our current manager whose gunho in planting more trees and plants and shrubs around our complex and even on our block. Has brought back some smaller birds, butterflies, bees and hummingbirds too that we havn't seen in along time.

So I believe we can change it if we have that type of heart that he has.

I would really love to believe we can change it! But sometimes i think all we really can do is stall it or slow down the inevatable, there are just too many people moving way to fast with industry and technology and without thinking through the effects and consequences those things will have in the long term. I,m sorry to say i believe we are ushering in some difficult times for the future generation of this planet and all her children!

I believe there has to be a way and maybe it has to be Mandatory school cirriculum, like a R.O.T.C.
All must pass before graduation and yes, it would be a slow start but what else do we have? Have everyday a Earth Day?!

I agree we can,t give up and cetainly we have to keep trying! And school programs so the next generation stays focussed on the seriousness of the problem can only help,But i think you,ll agree that we all have to get commited to a lot more possitive action as well as holding ourselves and everyone responsible and accountable, including big industries and governments around the globe! Then i believe anything is possible!

lol that is creepy

alot of smaller birds and butterflys live off of flowering plants and in this day and age many can't be bothered with gardens. when I was a kid most backyards had flowers - nowadays it's sparce.

I have to admit I'm not the starry example here. I recently got into recycling, useing less electricity and buying a couple of those new 'less energy lightbulbs' and being water conscious.

My manager is the one that fights, he goes around our nieghborhood 'Graffitti Busting' and goes so often to city hall to complain about anything to 'Pot Holes' to 'water conservation.' He's our starry host!

But its like you said, big industries and government needs to do something now!

Southern California is overpopulated and so overgrown to one huge mess. were not thinking here.
Developers has got to have some sort of reponsibilties and we as individuals as well. Cutting trees and plants for urban sprawl and not replacing them is not helping the bird population at all.

lately I bought alot of plants and hopeing that will be a good start. Now where do I get a green thumb?!

yeah the snowball is rolling as my mother says

I have noticed that species of insects such as Christmas beetles and cicardas are missing here too like last summer i couldnt find a christmas beetle when five years ago they were everywhere

I firmly believe we are headed toward a plague.
A massive pandemic throughout the world.
All it would take is a virus that mutates quickly, is airborne and sickens quickly to the point of death.
With today's mass transporation, experts estimate such a virus would be entrenched throughout the world, from pole to pole, within 24 hours.
Plagues seem to attack societies that become overpopulated.
In 1918, a pandemic of influenza killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people -- far more than died in World War I, which ended that same year.
The influenza pandemic of 1918 has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history.
More people died of influenza in that single year than in four years of the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) from 1347 to 1351.
So why don't we hear more of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918?
Because World War I was coming to a close, or had ended, and it occupied the front pages of newspapers.
Just as suddenly as the influenza pandemic flu appeared in 1918, it disappeared. Some scientists believe it mutated into being harmless.
But keep this in mind: a harmless or merely troublesome virus (such as the "common cold") could mutate into a vicious killer.

If a pandemic occurs, it will be catastrophic.
Civilization as we know it would collapse.
Who would grow the food, purify the water, provide the police, fire and medical services that city dwellers require from others?
What would the millions of residents of London, New York, Paris and Beijing do for food, clean water and basic needs?

Yeah, it's a pretty bleak picture. But ultimately, it will stop or severely curtail Man's reign on Earth. Some experts estimate that fewer than 100,000 humans would survive worldwide. Others believe even that figure is optimistic.
We'd be back to the stone age, scrounging for food, water and living in small bands for protection.
Forget "Road Warrior" and all the cheesy post-apocalyptic movies you've seen. The reality would be far worse, far more savage and unforgiving of mistakes or stupid decisions.
The Earth would begin to heal but it may take up to a million years for some particularly nasty chemicals to break down.

And here's the worst part ...
What can you do?
Not a damned thing.
There is no practical defense against exposure to a rogue, killer virus.
So remember what the ancients counseled: "Eat, drink and be merry -- for tomorrow we all may die."
Enjoy your life. No one gets out of it alive.