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Bird populations declining fast across North America

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Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#91

Post by colechristensen »

rowathay wrote: post #33
jonmc12 wrote: post #22

> The U.S North American Bird Conservation Initiative estimates that our pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone. The 100M pet cats in US on average kill 26 birds/yr? Doesn't seem right. When I track the source[1] of research, the estimates include both "own" and "unowned" cats and rely on some assumptions like "a correction factor to account for owned cats not returning all prey to owners"…

It’s an estimate based on fairly thorough research, which includes attaching collar cameras to outdoor cats. The carnage they wreak is impressive. Cats belong indoors, period.

It seems like this is just narrative based judgment. Everyone is all about how reintroduced wolves are so great for XYZ because predators do so many good things for environments and prey dynamics but cats in the environment are bad for ABC and they kill all the birds, etc.

Most of the places which aren’t islands had predators in roughly the housecat niche before human civilization and many of those are lost.

I think it’s just the opposition by agriculture for wolves and the fact that people aren’t as affectionate for their prey which makes the “wolves good” narrative and people like birds and feel good about blaming humans so there’s “cats bad” narrative.

It probably doesn’t matter, your suburban cats are killing birds in a habitat that humans already destroyed by putting a suburb there.

If you want to make a difference to offset some cat activity plant native pollinator friendly plants and trees and shrubs that bear fruit for birds. You’ll make much more difference building habitat than complaining into the void.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#93

Post by DantesKite »

titzer wrote: post #54
patall wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially passenger pigeons, not a single decline in 107 years.

Ouch. (they're exinct already). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

Feral pigeons are doing well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_pigeon

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#95

Post by marcosdumay »

rubylark wrote: post #79
micromacrofoot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it means cats and other factors are outpacing replacement, for a total of 3 billion lost… that’s a lot. Total population was somewhere in the area of 10 billion in north america, now around 7 billion

So I guess my next question is: what is the replacement rate? Because 2.6B dead a year from a single source when there is only about 10B alive at any one time, AND that 26% annual death not being the highest cause of bird mortality (e.g. >>26% of all birds die a year), then that means there are a lot of bird babies and a lot of bird corpses out there. The stats are a bit mind boggling for me.

Most birds get into reproductive age between 1 and 3 years, and for most species a couple usually has 1 or 2 viable offspring per year.

Some birds grow slower than that, but cats are usually not a problem for them.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#96

Post by rch »

immmmmm wrote: post #55

the single most terrifying experience of my life has been to read biology conservation articles these last two years, coupled with my increasing understanding of climate change (literature). we often forget that ecosystems (that we barely understand) provide us with crucial benefits and should be considered as (like many planetary scientists say) Life Support Systems . if there remain historians a century from now, i…

The terrifying aspect for me is that some of the more vocal climate activists seem willing to accept catastrophic, effectively permanent, biodiversity loss as long as short term human suffering is mitigated.

I support non-zero-sum efforts in these areas, with perhaps a greater emphasis on protecting biodiversity.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#97

Post by qqqwerty »

nitrogen wrote: post #84

I've noticed an even more disturbing trend of learned helplessness and misanthropic Malthusianism in these threads over the years. Not a single comment, at time of writing, has had a positive tone, and there are very few actionable suggestions. No consideration is given to the many positives in modern life, nor to realistic, productive tradeoffs. Everyone wants to wail in dismay at the perceived impending doom and do…

There are plenty of folks on HN who are trying to solve climate change, myself included. But if you spend enough time in the industry, it becomes apparent that it is incredibly difficult to move the needle without significant government level intervention.

For example, no matter how hard you try, there will be no profitable carbon capture venture under our current regulatory regime. Every scheme to sell some sort of carbon capture derived chemical product will fail to compete against traditional fossil fuel produced equivalents. It is a matter of physics, not hacker spirit. The government either needs to support the carbon capture market, or regulate against the fossil fuel industry. There is no "free market" approach that works here.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#98

Post by colechristensen »

immmmmm wrote: post #55

the single most terrifying experience of my life has been to read biology conservation articles these last two years, coupled with my increasing understanding of climate change (literature). we often forget that ecosystems (that we barely understand) provide us with crucial benefits and should be considered as (like many planetary scientists say) Life Support Systems . if there remain historians a century from now, i…

Fear sells. It also convinces people to get into science and biases their work and conclusions (not all of it, but definitely some of it that gets headlines).

We aren’t preserving the animals for themselves, in a geological time scale the animals will be fine, extinction and population contraction are just part of the dynamics. We are preserving animals because we like them and it seems a high quality thing to do.

The doom narrative gets attention but doesn’t fairly reflect a reasonable prediction for the future and attracts much opposition to the more reasonable and practical things we should do.

Turning things into fear and moralizing lightning rods polarizes but doesn’t necessarily actually move the mean.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#99

Post by Retric »

mypalmike wrote: post #88
Retric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within the context of a Model. Models that don’t capture the very large scale effects are useless and therefore not worth talking about. What’s left is models that used to capture large scale effects and all the smaller effects that where never captured by the model.

At any granularity, knowledge consists of models in the consciousness of the thinker.

Direct observation exists alongside models. You may not be able to correctly interpret that observation, but it is still a form of knowledge.

This is true even if what’s being observed is by a simulated entity, the observation exists outside of it’s internal models and is indirectly related to things in the underlying reality. Ie, physical states of various bits of physical RAM.

Re: Bird populations declining fast across North America

#100

Post by dbtc »

moosey wrote: post #5

Until human society stops serving abstractions (like money) over things that are real, then real things will continually face consequence. These will still over into our lives in a multitude of ways until we no longer have real systems to support these abstractions. Loss of natural life is such a failure. Today we speak of stock markets, governments, businesses. Someday, our main concern will not be these shared drea…

Interesting. I frame it as a problem of radical materialism’s ignorance of intangible importances: [love, beauty, god, consciousness, ...]
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