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North America Loses 3 Billion Birds in 50 Years

posted by martyb on Monday September 23 2019, @12:53AM   
from the better-go-find-me-some-more-worms dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Disappearance of meadows and prairies, expansion of farmlands, use of pesticide blamed for 29 percent drop since 1970.

The number of birds in the United States and Canada has dropped by an astonishing 29 percent, or almost three billion, since 1970, scientists said on Thursday, saying their findings signalled a widespread ecological crisis.

Grassland birds were the most affected, because of the disappearance of meadows and prairies and the extension of farmlands, as well as the growing use of pesticides that kill insects that affects the entire food chain.

"Birds are in crisis," Peter Marra, director of the Georgetown Environment Initiative at Georgetown University and a co-author of the study published in the journal Science, was quoted by Reuters as saying.

Forest birds and species that occur in a wider variety of habitats - known as habitat generalists - are also disappearing.

"We see the same thing happening the world over, the intensification of agriculture and land use changes are placing pressure on these bird populations," Ken Rosenberg, an ornithologist at Cornell University and principal co-author of the paper in Science told AFP news agency.

"Now, we see fields of corn and other crops right up to the horizon, everything is sanitised and mechanised, there's no room left for birds, fauna and nature."

More than 90 percent of the losses are from just 12 species including sparrows, warblers, blackbirds, and finches.

The figures mirror declines seen elsewhere, notably France, where the National Observatory of Biodiversity estimates there was a 30 percent decline in grassland birds between 1989 and 2017.

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Original Submission

• Re:Too many humans Re:Too many humans (Score: 2, Informative) by EJ on Monday September 23 2019, @01:59AM (2 children)

  by EJ (2452) on Monday September 23 2019, @01:59AM (#897349)

  Typical idiot response. This isn't about people dying today. It's about fewer people being born.

  I will just thank you for doing your part by being unfuckable, so at least you won't be adding any new kids to the planet.

  Parent

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• Re:Too many humans (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:03AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:03AM (#897352)

  Fewer people will be born tomorrow if you kill fertile women today. Better start now. The future is depending on you.

  Parent

• Re:Too many humans (Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday September 23 2019, @02:23AM

  by c0lo (156) on Monday September 23 2019, @02:23AM (#897366) Journal

  It's about fewer people being born.

  Simple. Increase their standard of living until they get to middle-class.
  Next: maintain them in gig-economy and wage-and-loans-slaves, on the brink of losing their status; they'll waste themselves in the fight to keep the status and forget about children.
  This is how US has the economy booming and the fertility rate declining under the value of replacement rate [vox.com]. Easy, see?

  The “replacement” fertility rate of 2.1, enough to renew the population, is typically viewed as the optimal level for stability. But in 2017, the total fertility rate, or number of births each woman is expected to have in her childbearing years, dropped to 1.76 in the US. By 2018, it declined again — to 1.72, another record low. “The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971 and consistently below replacement for the last decade,” the new CDC report, which is based on more than 99 percent of US birth records, reads.

  It’s not yet clear exactly what’s driving the trend, and the CDC authors don’t offer any guesses. Some, like the economist Lyman Stone, have suggested America’s “historic collapse in childbearing” is being driven by the fact that society isn’t organized to support people having all the babies they’d like to. Others have blamed the economy.

  Whatever the cause, researchers from Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and other universities warned in a 2018 Hill commentary that a low birthrate is another contributor to the “aging society” in the US — where the proportion of the population over 65 is greater than the proportion under age 15 — and that the effects of this demographic makeup “will reverberate for years to come.”

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  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  Parent