What’s a greater threat to birds, high-rise glass buildings or overuse of pesticides? What’s the impact of the loss of insects, or the spread of industrial agricultural, or the hundreds of millions of cats on the loose? What will it take to halt the gradual erosion of North America’s birds.
A compelling, revealing and at times heated debate has played out on our website and Facebook page in recent weeks. The outpouring was in response to Flying Lesson’s series on the five-year anniversary of the discovery that a third of the hemisphere’s bird have vanished over the past half century.
There’s no shortage of opinions among Flying Lessons’ readers about the chief culprits undermining North America’s birds. Their thoughts are a reflection of the greater population’s view we’ve encountered since the revelation of these precipitous declines.
“The elephant in the room is our agricultural system and the mindset that goes along with it,’’ wrote John Shiel, a reader posting on our Facebook page. “Complete obliteration of local flora and fauna over an unbroken vastness of landscape. How much do you need to think about that before you realize what it means for life on Earth?”
“As a hunter, I am noticing a significant drop in the quality of wildlife in the woods, and birds stand out,’’ said Dave Hafner, an outdoorsman who’s grown concerned about the impact of overhunting that he’s sees around him. “Such harvesting year in and year out is not sustainable and is devastating our wildlife.’’
Gene Bayne, whose home on 40 acres of land draws species from Pileated Woodpeckers to Bald Eagles, said he thinks the widespread use of chemicals is at the heart of the problem. “My contention would be that herbicides and insecticides are wiping out food sources for many animals and birds,’’ he wrote.
Stephen Biggs said you need look no farther than your car’s windshield to see the evidence. “Growing up fifty or sixty years ago, when you drove somewhere your windshield would be covered with bugs,” he said. “Much more needs to be done to minimize this threat to wildlife and people.”
At times, the debate turned bitter. Several cat lovers took issue with the notion that their pets are to blame. “It is obvious that there are people on this post that hate cats,” wrote Annie Tomer. “Cats are wonderful creatures and the reason there are so many feral cats is the fault of irresponsible people, not the cats who are just trying to survive.”
Another edgy exchange cropped up over how hunting contributes to curbing bird population. That was prompted by several hunters who themselves say there needs to be more care if they want to have birds to harvest in the future. “Killing birds for fun doesn’t help the birds,” said Steven Brennan, who asked the fellow hunters on the post, “Will you quit hunting?”
The debate is very much worth reading especially the robust exchanges on our Facebook pagee we posted links to our anniversary series. The conversation illustrates how we tend to see a narrow piece of the puzzle in casting blame for a tragedy like this.
In fact, there doesn’t need to be a lot of guessing at what’s going on. There’s been significant progress in pinning down the precise causes of the loss of billions of birds, and attaching the rough numbers of the impacts of specific forces at work. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has even assembled a list of causes the agency publishes in the descending order of what is killing the most birds.
At the top of the list are collision with buildings and glass windows that confuse birds, and those include both high-rise and residential homes. Between them, an estimated 1 billion birds die each year crashing into windows and glass-like structures they mistake for open air. Following collisions with buildings, cars and electrical wires come losses due to cats, turbines and other urban hazards.
What’s harder to put a specific number on are the impact of disappearing habitat, long known to cause the fundamental decline of bird populations in North America. The Fish and Wildlife Service simply lists the disappearance of habitat as the primary culprit with its numbers unknowable.
What these data tell us is that while some of these causes are tough to address, many can absolutely be mitigated if we want to.
Elsewhere on this website, we go into details on what people can do around their homes and businesses to help birds, from using windows and decals that cut down on collisions to putting in native plants that support birds. This section on what individuals can do to protect birds lists more than a dozen steps that don’t take all that much effort but can have significant impact.
On a community scale, towns and cities can cut down on lights that confuse birds during peak migration weeks. Government agencies large and small can adopt building standards that cut down on collisions with glass and mirrored high-rise buildings. Dozens of municipalities and some agencies are doing these things, but it’s still a small number compared to the ones that could.
Like many issues before Congress, several far-reaching and potentially powerful initiatives have stalled just at the point they are desperately needed. Chief among them is the Restoring America’s Wildlife Act that passed the U.S. House but not the Senate, despite widespread support and its bipartisan origins. Nothing signifies the unwillingness to do something on behalf of vanishing bird populations than this stalled legislation that would provide support and resources aimed directly at this crisis.
The five-year anniversary of the Three Billion Birds report seemed like a good time to assess the progress made in response to these revelations of bird losses. (Here are links to a landing page that includes all the series on the anniversary.) There does seem to be far more public awareness of both the causes of the losses and the perilous consequences of further erosion of bird populations. The discussions on our website and Facebook page reflect plenty of knowledge as well as appropriate frustration.
But there’s no way around the conclusion that we’re mostly twiddling our thumbs as birds continue to fall victim to this combination of forces. Now is the time to take this problem seriously and do something – both on individual fronts and by the nonprofit, private and public organizations that watch over birds. It will note be easy, especially with a Presidential administration and Congress that have a record of opposition to almost any wildlife and environmental protection.
We can only hope that the public will show the concerns our federal leaders do not and push for the simple steps that will help not just birds, but humans as well. One of the haunting lessons of the Three Billion Bird research is how quickly a huge portion of the North American bird population can be lost; in this case it took just 50 years — the equivalent of a blink of the eye in the history of creatures that date back to dinosaurs. If serious action is postponed much longer, we can expect the next half century to see another huge portion of our birds vanish from the Earth.
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