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A third of North America’s birds have vanished

nautil.us

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Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#211

Post by Sai_ »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #202
Sai_ wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> represented their constituents How would they know what the views of their constituents are? They'd require either require exhaustive, expensive but representative polling on every topic or wait in call back mode - the constituents with the most to lose or gain will call back and help them form an opinions. The first is impossible and actually goes against the notion of representative democracy and conscious indiff…

> How would they know what the views of their constituents are? The number of representatives in the US House needs to be expanded. The proportion of citizens to representatives is way out of whack. Having more representatives with smaller districts would allow representatives to better know and support their district’s interests and views.

Is that realistic? Even organizing a team lunch for ten involves a lot of customer discovery and tradeoffs and here too, the loudest voices (analogous to committed voters or lobbyists) usually win.

Even if the final ratio of representatives to voters is 1:10, you have only moved the problem upstream to this giant body of 33 million representatives who now need to agree on a policy. Simply voting Yes/No could lead to 50%-10 of the population feeling disenfranchised.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#212

Post by nemo »

smaudet wrote: post #183
23B1 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, which is why you have the opportunity to evangelize what you're doing. Like for example, a two dudes in my hood have swapped their lawns over to micro clover because I did it three years ago; the lawn is packed with wildlife, and it looks great. Wouldn't have happened had they not come over for BBQ one day and asked about it.

Part of it is evangelizing, but its bigger than that - the yards of tomorrow need to look at lot more like grasslands and a lot less like farmland or golf courses, though. Grassland is long grass, and it shelters a lot more than just insects and birds. It can be cover for small dogs, cats, beavers, possums, moles, mice, snakes, etc... Understandably most "neighborhoods" don't want snakes, raccoons, or possums in thei…

Yeah a lot of inhabitants of a healthy habitat are labeled culturally as "pests" and "pest control" does a lot of damage to native plants, insects, birds, and other wildlife. I go out identifying insects under my porch lights or out in the yard submitting iNaturalist observations. There' an amazing, diverse natural world out there that can be accessible in a local yard that's a native habitat. I'm up to 400 species at my house (lots of those are moths and other insects). But in reality there's a lot of people who see any snake, insect, or arachnid, and respond with "kill it with fire."

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#213

Post by tonyhb »

vasco wrote: post #203
tonyhb wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it yourself - domestic vs unowned. People aren’t counting unowned cats en masse, and domestication is the root cause of those feral cats. Also, their range is lower bound 3* your numbers, so there’s no need to cherry pick the highest end of all ranges here. Whether they’re right or not, it’s plausible and probable that cats are a problem. Biggest problem? Who knows

> Whether they’re right or not, it’s plausible and probable that cats are a problem. It's not plausible to me that cats kill 10-30 other animals per day if they go outside.

With 60m cats and a mid range 15b animals killed, that’s 250 deaths per cat a year, less than one a day. According to the study. Idk where you’re getting your numbers from dude but it’s not TFA. You’re blowing things out of proportion by several orders of magnitude.

Is it plausible that they’re a problem by killing some number of animals?

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#214

Post by Balgair »

Darwin talked about bird deaths around him during the winter. By his estimation, he thought ~3/4 birds would die of starvation every year. A massive amount. He commented that a plague of 1/10 people would be a near apocalypse, yet many fauna experience this year after year.

So, with a fecundity like that, it is a big deal that ~1/3 birds aren't returning relative to baseline. Something big really is happening to do devastation like that. I don't know the modeling and the second order partial differential equations to really say something (read the article, obviously), but I can say that reductions like this are big deals.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#215

Post by SapporoChris »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #19
MrVandemar wrote: post #13

The estimate is about 200 species go extinct every day from the actions of human beings -- ecosystem destruction, degredation, climate change etc. We are a meatgrinder to the biosphere.

Very few bird species have gone extinct this century though, and many that were on the utter brink have rebounded (California condor, whooping crane, and kakapo to name a few). Conservation works.

If conservation worked this article wouldn't exist.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#216

Post by nerdponx »

josho wrote: post #95
klipklop wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t to have you save the birds, it’s to get you to give up certain freedoms to a group that claims they can save the birds.

I’m so tired of these conservative freedom arguments. Somehow on one side it’s always the freedom to consume, like the freedom to own a 5,000sq ft home, or an oversized SUV. Conservative freedoms never seem to be about my freedom to enjoy listening to the birdsong of native birds because we saved their habitat.

It's insidious anti-action propaganda.

The implication is that if someone actually wanted to save the birds, you should support them, but actually everyone is just looking to curtail your freedoms and nobody is actually looking to save the birds. Therefore don't even bother trying to save the birds, if you care at all about your freedom. Otherwise you're a soft gullible mark, you wouldn't want to be a mark, would you?

That such propaganda tends to align with consumption and/or antisocial and/or selfish behavior is a big clue, but it's not the end goal.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#217

Post by pkpjpm »

23B1 wrote: post #35

One thing I dislike the most about these problems – and the information/media/activism around them – is the "solutioning". Yes, we should recycle and reduce carbon emissions and learn to live in a more integrated fashion with earth. But the problem is so diffuse and requires substantive work against powerful forces (government, business, apathy). What I'd like to see more of, when presented with these sorts of proble…

Jane Goodall has a very simple and realistic (but not easy) framework for recovering from the anthropocene extinction:

1. Eliminate poverty worldwide (this is essential because desperately poor people will not let environmental concerns keep them from basic survival) 2. Radically reduce resource consumption by rich nations and individuals 3. Eliminate government corruption 4. Stop human population increase

Obviously achieving this will require upending many power structures and confronting many deficiencies of human nature. But when you see it laid out like that, it seems obvious that is task ahead of us.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#219

Post by nerdponx »

indus wrote: post #218

I’m super optimistic about this situation. But nature is the most powerful breeder. We will see newer species being born, more adapted to the current conditions.

No we won't. The planet will. But we won't.

The environment can remain inhospitable longer than you and your species can survive.

Re: A third of North America’s birds have vanished

#220

Post by vlovich123 »

Balgair wrote: post #214

Darwin talked about bird deaths around him during the winter. By his estimation, he thought ~3/4 birds would die of starvation every year. A massive amount. He commented that a plague of 1/10 people would be a near apocalypse, yet many fauna experience this year after year. So, with a fecundity like that, it is a big deal that ~1/3 birds aren't returning relative to baseline. Something big really is happening to do d…

Would you out a lot of stock in those estimates when we know we’ve historically really struggled to keep an eye on bird populations until more recent times when we actually understand migratory patterns and have actual tracking tech?

In other words, do we have any modern evidence of these bird exterminations or is this even worse?

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