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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

#351

Post by dryrun »

1over137 wrote: post #289
eastbound wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it’s common that my city (France) requires 1 thick-trunk tree per ~80 square meter (9m x 9m). Also there is a ratio of concrete-vs-earth of 10% (posh neighborhoods), 15% or 20%, and parking spots per living surface. My yard is 30x50m => 1500sqm => 1275sqm must be kept as earth, I must have 18 trees (thick-trunk) (and 2 parking spots and the street must have 0.5 guest parking spot).

Wait, you have tree requirements, but you also have mandatory car parking requirements!?

I don't know about the tree requirement, as I don't believe I have that in my hometown, but we do have a mandatory 2 parking slots rule, within the limits of the property. The idea is to ease the parking space (less traffic jams, less people turning around searching for a place, less pollution also), avoid cars being on sidewalks and general security (better view of the surroundings when driving)

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

#352

Post by Mistletoe »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #126

"Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals."[0] [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 Studies show that outdoor cats kill billions of birds annually. Anecdotally, posting anti cat studies on social media leads to real world threats and cat lovi…

And the sad thing is if they are like our cats they don’t even eat it. Just random genes for killing in their genome that they don’t even use or need anymore. The cats won’t even eat much other food that isn’t their dry kibble and certainly not an animal they just killed.

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

#353

Post by oulipo »

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…

You forgot:

1. Take arms and do the revolution

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

#354

Post by unhammer »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #79
themitigating wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollution is a problem for everyone. We need government regulations and every single person changing their lifestyle but guess what, it won't happen. We had peak awareness in the 80s and 90s, I remember in school time was dedicated to ecology and the environment. Now half the US is actively working against environmentalism. You're blaming the media for not talking about species going extint but about flooding. If peo…

> We had peak awareness in the 80s and 90s, I remember in school time was dedicated to ecology and the environment. You can go back to the 70's. There was a fascinating amount of experimentation in education when I grew up in the 70's. I went to two rather interesting "experimental" schools — one public, one private. But regardless, there was a Zeitgeist in the 70's both of danger (over-population, pollution) but als…

Or even a decade earlier:

> Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. It talked about environmental impacts that correlated with the widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. The book cited claims that DDT and other pesticides caused cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#History

By the way, you can get Silent Spring for free on https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20151002 – and it is still very much worth reading; eloquent and poetic while still being factual, informative and balanced. The producers of DDT and other poisons started a smear-campaign after the publication, but it only lead to a Streisand-effect. See also this little clip from her single TV interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nriVjC0H8I

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

#355

Post by unhammer »

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.

Not just conservation, but banning some of the worst pesticides in the 60's

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

#356

Post by badpun »

zerodensity wrote: post #344
mtsr wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Materials yes, but easily accessible sources of large amounts of energy are mostly gone.

I mean they will still have the sun.

Producing solar panels requires an advanced technical civilization being in place. You cannot jump from middle ages tech to producing solar panels with skipping dependence on fossil fuels in the intermediate steps.

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

#357

Post by darkerside »

ryandrake wrote: post #70
foobarian wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is over-consumption even possible? It's the plentiful cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels that we figured out how to tap into. Once that is gone I am hopeful the next civilization cycle will be more temperate.

More likely once the current civilization’s cheap source of energy is gone, the next civilization will revert to the pre-industrial source of cheap energy: slavery.

Oof, this hurt to read

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

#358

Post by giantg2 »

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…

I agree that I like grassroots solutions. However, what would that look like here? The main culprit is that grasslands have disappeared on a massive scale, being replaced by farms and houses. Of course there are still some bird in protected areas or larger yards, but I don't think anything will be able to make up for the population loss when the habitat loss is so great.

The one thing thats not mentioned in the article that might make a difference at a smaller level is pesticides. Many people love to have a yard without weeds and without bugs. Without some flowering weeds, many bugs have no food. Pesticides kill the rest. Now what will the birds eat? There aren't any flowering or seed producing plants and there aren't any bugs.

I hate ticks and mosquitoes, but there are some targeted solutions for those.

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

#359

Post by giantg2 »

bmitc wrote: post #114
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…

Individuals cannot solve this. I leave trees up, dead or alive. I plant native plants. I remove invasive species. I only keep invasive bushes if they house birds. I don't spray for insects except around the base of my house, I don't kill off chipmunks, voles, squirrels, rabbits, etc. How can this compete with the dozens of neighbors in a half-mile radius that have removed in excess of hundreds of trees, big ones like…

"Unless governments take action and penalize corporations for the harm they've done and take measures to prevent further harm,"

What would those measures look like?

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

#360

Post by giantg2 »

arcticbull wrote: post #341
b112 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that cats kill a lot of birds and something needs to be done about this. Outside of birds, cats kill rodents. I live in rural Quebec, near farms, a massive nature preserve, and a national park larger than small US states. When I first moved here, I had no cat, and several other neighbours were new to the area. Old houses, not fresh builds, just changeover of owners... they too with no cats. The first year I w…

If they only killed mice that would be a fun fact, but they also kill 20 billion small mammals a year, lol. The point was though that cats are killing all the birds, that they help a few people with a mouse problem is tangential at best to the topic at hand. I can accept that mice are a problem and cats are killing all the birds and small mammals at the same time. It’s kind of like saying DDT is fine actually because…

The outdoor neighborhood cats are the ones that are an issue. It sounds like promoting owl habitat would be a great targeted solution to mice problem without affecting small birds as much.
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