Bird populations plummeting
The bumper stickers say,
”
Act Locally, Think Globally.
”
Bird populations plummeting
The bumper stickers say, “Act Locally, Think Globally.”
I don’t like adopting my personal philosophy from adhesive stickers on the back of Toyotas. I’m more inclined toward the anonymous grafittist who amended a bumper sticker urging us to “Question Authority” with “who says?”
But “Act Locally, Think Globally,” resonates with me because it’s real. And nothing drives it home more eloquently than the migratory birds we share San Benito County with.
The coming and going of birds marks the seasons for me and underscores the poignancy of that “act locally” admonition. In their hemispheric peregrinations birds embody the philosophy.
The loss of habitat here, or of tropical forests in Central and South America, can be observed at the other end of the migratory route. Many birds are, quite literally, the canaries in the coalmine, early warning systems indicating a troubled planet.
It does not matter if birds interest you one bit. The decline of a number of species should indicate a larger malaise.
And it’s time to get worried.
The National Audubon Society recently published results of a study that shows a broad decline in wild bird numbers over the last 40 years. And the decline is not limited to songbirds, but shows in some popular game species as well.
Northern pintail numbers are down by 77 percent over 1967. Another duck, greater scaup, is down by 75 percent.
An Eastern bird, the northern bobwhite, has declined by 82 percent, the biggest among all the birds studied.
Many of the birds showing declines are those depending on grassy habitats. Some of them are disappearing as cities sprawl out over prairies but there are a variety of likely contributors.
On the Western prairie, deep wells and pivot irrigation have worked to turn the native short grasses into fields of grain, at the cost of ground nesting populations like the Western meadowlark and the mountain plover.
Among the birds studied, there are 432 million fewer than in 1967.
The researchers who did the study do not yet know all the factors leading to the broad decline.
Other species, however, are thriving. Wild turkeys are growing in numbers by 14 percent per year. Double-crested cormorants, the black diving birds found around most of the ponds in San Benito County, are adding 8 percent to their numbers every year.
There is a common thread: most of the disappearing birds are specialists, while those that are thriving are generalists that co-exist well with humans and altered environments.
The first step to solving the problem has to be to recognize it as a problem, and to be mindful of the manifold effects we have on our neighbors, human and otherwise.
