Enlight21

Author: | Category: Environment | Date: 11-29-2019

An earth without birds. No chirping sounds, no fluttering wings. Silence. Whether or not we can imagine a bird-less world, it’s coming. According to a new study conducted by a team of university, government, and non-profit researchers, a world devoid of birds is our future, perhaps our near future.

The study, published in the highly-respected journal, Science, surveyed 76 percent of all bird species (over 500 species) in the U.S. and Canada, a population that represents close to the entire population of birds in the world.

What the team found shocked researchers: there are now almost 3 billion fewer birds than there were ½ a century ago. The number of birds in the U.S. and Canada alone has declined by almost 30 percent since 1970. The study underscored that this precipitous decline included even common birds such as sparrows, robins, and other common bird species.

The key causes are habitat loss and pervasive pesticide usage. But the decimation of birds has ramifications that go beyond the extinction of other categories of wildlife. Referring to the massive loss of birds, Conservation biologist, Kevin Gaston, states: “This is the loss of nature.”

Because common bird species constitute the foundation of whole ecosystems—through their activities as pest controllers, plant pollinators, seed spreaders, and forest regenerators—their precipitous decline means that nature is in peril.

Hopefully, the public, especially bird watchers, nature lovers, and conservation organizations, will be able to launch a full-scale movement to make the earth more bird-friendly. Stopping the extinction of birds will require a large scale political movement on the part of concerned citizens around the world. Without such a movement, not only are birds doomed, but the end of nature will be here soon, perhaps sooner than the most pessimistic experts had predicted. (more)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/science/bird-populations-america-canada.html

Environment