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The ancient world teemed with birds

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Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#51

Post by TulliusCicero »

darkmighty wrote: post #4

Birds have been in significant and will probably continue to decline due to human activity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_extinction The main drivers I think are plain habitat loss, pesticide use (associated decline in insect population), and large scale change in available food and climate. I think the easiest to address would be pesticide and herbicide use -- widely known to have other negative side effects, s…

Habitat loss may be reversing now due to urbanization, as population growth has slowed (and largely stabilized or even declined in the developed world).

I'm guessing as those little rural towns in Japan become increasingly abandoned, animals are moving in.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#52

Post by goda90 »

Concerning passenger pigeons[0], which went 100% extinct in 1910 due to hunting: "in 1866, one flock in southern Ontario was described as being 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide and 500 km (310 mi) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#53

Post by Kaiyou »

coldtea wrote: post #36
Angostura wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't be making like for pets more miserable. We should be explaining to people the damage that cats to to the local ecology and dissuading them from having them. A fun talk I had with my kids.

Well, an urban centre doesn't have much "local ecology" to begin with...

The only birds in my city are pidgeons (that defecate everywhere), sparrows and crows. At least the only ones I actually see.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#54

Post by PhasmaFelis »

icebraining wrote: post #35
Angostura wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't be making like for pets more miserable. We should be explaining to people the damage that cats to to the local ecology and dissuading them from having them. A fun talk I had with my kids.

Kids are far more destructive for the environment than cats, though.

Source on that? Most kids don't make a habit of killing local wildlife. Or are you using "kids" as a proxy for "habitat loss from rising human population"?

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#55

Post by Buttons840 »

lawlessone wrote: post #25
coldtea wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's make the life of a pet miserable so we can have urban/suburban birds... As if the problem is the loss of birds in Manhattan or Queens, and not the loss of birds in millions of acres of rural USA (where cats are not really the problem), for example...

>Yes, let's make the life of a pet miserable so we can have urban/suburban birds... Responsible people don't let their dogs roam the streets as they can be a threat to strangers, children etc. why should we treat cat's any differently especially when cats kill far more.

The reason you gave for not allowing dogs to roam does not apply to cats.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#56

Post by marcosdumay »

i_am_proteus wrote: post #46
gaoshan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. People in suburban and urban areas should be banned from having outdoor cats, period.

Cats are very useful for removing rats. Cat ban is considered harmful.

Hawks, owls and snakes are much more useful for removing rats, and cats are about as useful for removing those as they are for removing rats.

I do not support a cat ban, but that argument is not a good one.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#57

Post by icebraining »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #54
icebraining wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids are far more destructive for the environment than cats, though.

Source on that? Most kids don't make a habit of killing local wildlife. Or are you using "kids" as a proxy for "habitat loss from rising human population"?

I'm including indirect kills over their lifetime, not just direct kills over the childhood (kittens aren't capable of killing that much either), but otherwise, it's a fairly 1:1 comparison, nothing to do with whether the human population is rising or not.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#58

Post by wutbrodo »

ljf wrote: post #47
est31 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats, as cute as they are, are a major contributor as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/cat-bird... > Feral cats on islands are responsible for at least 14% global bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions and are the principal threat to almost 8% of critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x

Don't only blame cats: https://www.livescience.com/27330-dogs-disrupt-wildlife.html https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...

There's a bit of a difference here: the staggering figures for wildlife killed by cats that they cite is for the US:

> the felines kill between 1.4 billion and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion small mammals, such as meadow voles and chipmunks, each year.

But since free-roaming dogs are very uncommon in the US (and most of the developed world), they have to jump to strays and owned free-roaming dogs across the world to make their comparison.

To be clear, the latter is on point relative to what we're discussing in this thread (eg the feral cats statistic). But there are solutions in reach that would be acceptable for dealing with strays (eg, what we do for dogs in the US), that apply to both dogs and cats. The difference is that this would cause dogs' threat to the local environment to nearly vanish, while cats would still pose a massive threat to local wildlife due to owners that let their cats roam.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#59

Post by wutbrodo »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #32
est31 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats, as cute as they are, are a major contributor as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/cat-bird... > Feral cats on islands are responsible for at least 14% global bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions and are the principal threat to almost 8% of critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles. https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x

Two more from The Atlantic: - How Cats Used Humans to Conquer the World - -- Ancient DNA from 209 cats over 9,000 years tell the story of their dispersal. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/cat-domi... - The End of Cats: An Interview With the New Zealand Economist Calling to Eliminate All Kitties -- "The cat lobby here is just as feral, self-centered and as balmy as your gun lobby is" https://www.the…

> "The cat lobby here is just as feral, self-centered and as balmy as your gun lobby is"

Damn, that is quite the quote. I imagine he's not quite being fair (though I admittedly have little exposure to the pet politics of New Zealand", but I have noticed a strong and immediate current of defensiveness among cat owners whenever anything negative about cats is brought up (in a way that's absent when say, domestic dogs as a vector for disease are brought up). Though it's perhaps a little understandable that cat lovers would be a little thin-skinned due to the general bad rap that cats get.

Re: The ancient world teemed with birds

#60

Post by i_am_proteus »

marcosdumay wrote: post #56
i_am_proteus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats are very useful for removing rats. Cat ban is considered harmful.

Hawks, owls and snakes are much more useful for removing rats, and cats are about as useful for removing those as they are for removing rats. I do not support a cat ban, but that argument is not a good one.

Is there a way for me to reliably employ a hawk, owl, or snake around my property?
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