I saw an article on Reuters about how many of the world’s most common birds have suffered steep declines in their numbers over recent decades. This is considered to be a sign of a deteriorating global environment and a biodiversity crisis according to Birdlife International.
“Birds provide an accurate and easy-to-read environmental barometer, allowing us to see clearly the pressures our current way of life are putting on the world’s biodiversity,” said Mike Rands, chief executive of the alliance of conservation groups.
The intensified levels of industrial scale agriculture and equally large scale and effective fishing operations are only a part of the threats to birds. Logging and the replacement of natural forests with singular plantations dedicated to one crop are also destructive to birds. They have no where to nest, to fish or to feed. Still, according to Mr. Rands, the long term effects of climate change may be the most serious of all stress placed on birds.
I am a big bird lover and this really disturbs me. I cannot imagine a world without these beautiful creatures, blue and red and white and filled with song, fluttering through the brush in my back yard. My cats, I’m sure, would also miss this lovely fliers, as they sit in the window all day long just watching. But just reading these facts, it seems grim.
Regarding specific regions of the world, BirdLife has said:
Bird fact #1: In Europe, 45 percent of common birds are declining;
Bird fact #2: In Australia, resident wading birds have lost 81% of their populations over the last quarter century;
Bird fact #3: In North America, 20 common birds’ populations have declined by half over the last 40 years;
Bird fact #4: In Latin America, the once-common yellow cardinal is now classified as globally endangered;
Bird fact #5: In Asia, populations of white-rumped vultures that numbered in the millions 16 years ago have crashed by 99.9 percent;
Bird fact #6: In the Middle East, birds like the Eurasian eagle owl are believed to be vanishing from forests.
Now I don’t know what a white rumped vulture is but I’m sure it has a place here on earth. Don’t you find it amazing that they have been reduced in number by a whopping 99%!!! This is scary stuff to me.
The world’s governments have committed to slowing the loss of biodiversity by 2010, but “reluctance to commit what are often trivial sums in terms of national budgets means that this target is almost certain to be missed,” the report said.
Technorati Tags: birds, wildlife, populations, extinction, global warming, climate change
