I can hardly bear to prepare this thread - the subject matter is so sad

[donsu]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0824/p09s02-coop.htm


Bird by bird, the avian population is shrinking
The songs of tens of millions of birds have been silenced. It feels as if the lights are dimming.


-snip-

Earlier this summer, the National Audubon Society released a definitive study of population trends of North American birds, a monumental effort based on decades of Christmas bird counts and breeding bird surveys. The study confirms what my grandfather feared and what most of us now know. Birds that I used to see routinely growing up in New England – evening grosbeaks, eastern meadowlarks, northern bobwhites – are in free fall. The losses are mind-boggling. Since my grandfather introduced me to birds just half a lifetime ago, once-common species have declined by as much as 80 percent due to the usual suspects: habitat loss, pesticides, introduced species, and climate change. The songs of tens of millions of birds have been silenced. It feels as if the lights are dimming.

-snip-
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not only will their songs be missed but birds have a purpose. they eat bugs,etc., they propagage plants, they provide fertilizer, they eat seeds and expell them and the seeds grow, etc., etc.

I miss them.

I hate the neo cons