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from the better-go-find-me-some-more-worms dept.
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @09:02AM (1 child)
The birds are dying because the insects are dying.
Compare the number of bugs in your area NOW vs. 1960s?? Notice anything?? And what do most birds eat?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday September 23 2019, @03:07PM
Not really. When I walk through grassland it's about the same number that fly up or skitter out of the way. Lots of grasshoppers around this year. Fireflies are about as numerous now as they were then. Difference is that I used to catch them in a jar then. Now I clean them off the windshield.
A lot of the birds they're talking about are seed eaters as well. I'm just not seeing the declines they talk about.
Now, there is a quite possible confounding factor. If the bird populations were already depressed in my area when I was a kid by the pesticides I mentioned, the removal of them may have caused enough increase to mask an overall decrease over a broader region. That's one of the reasons I'm not trying to argue with the article. A layman's observations in one small area can be very different from what is happening overall.
I'd think I'd notice a major decrease in insects. As an example, when I came back to central Illinois in 1999, I immediately noticed a startling lack of wild honey bees. Bumblebees were still around, but not honeybees. This was likely due partly to the varroa mite that was wreaking havoc on North American bees. Some have tried to link it to neonicotinoids, but the timing isn't right. The decrease started before the neonics were heavily used here. And we are one of the heaviest usage areas for them. We also didn't see much colony collapse disorder here either.
Again, there can be a lot of confounding factors. The head of our Intregrated Genomic Biology facility, Gene Robinson has an article here from a few years back: https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/205852 [illinois.edu]