Insurance companies, medical and dental association headquarters, and other commercial white collar offices occupy millions of acres of perfect grass mono-cultures across America. No weeds, no insects, no wildlife, and only non-native lab-cultivated ornamental trees.
It's time to urge local communities to pass ordinances outlawing the use of pesticides and herbicides on these headquarter properties. The acres and acres of perfect grass represent a death zone for all other life, and company executives must be made aware that it's time to end the cosmetics of making their headquarter office grounds looking like Stepford.
145
In my little yard, I see fewer and fewer bees, butterflies, ladybugs, bubble bees. Once in a while I see a bee but it flies into the ground. There used to be so many frogs but no more. I have chickadees, two stellar jays, squirrels, flickers and woodpeckers which I feed but I am worried for them all. I lost my robins and I think that was because they took worms from lawns that used toxic fertilizers. There are also fewer crows which I thought would last forever but no. Birds and other wildlife make life worth living. People you were blessed with wonderful wildlife. Save them.
86
@E. Rich It is depressing to think that humans have dominion over the life and death of all living beings,unless the only purpose for men's existence is to destroy the earth itself. To fix the certain collapse of our ecosystems, we must start by fixing our selves as we try to slow our assault on our planet, both at the time.
16
We live in a wooded neighborhood. New neighbors move in and their first instinct is to chop down trees. Stop doing this! If you don’t like trees, buy a house without them! Grass is not a substitute natural environment for wildlife or the planet.
87
@Purple Spain - Agreed! Just Say NO To Lawns!
11
If you look at the top image, what is in the background of the dead bird? Why....it's a perfectly 'green' lawn. And therein lies just one likely contributor.... pesticides. Americans are fixated on their 'perfect' lawns. It's insidious. We've been brainwashed into thinking that anything else that may sprout among our grass is a 'weed'. Who wants ugly bright yellow dandelions, buttercups, white clover etc. blemishing their perfect, chemical-laden lawn?
I've not seen a grasshopper since I was a teenager...over 40 years ago.
The human race is quite disgusting.
30
@Lisa, to be fair, a wide range of things could have killed that bird. It could have fallen victim to any of a host of avian diseases. It could be malnourished. It could have smashed into a pane of reflective glass. It could have swallowed something that choked it. You cannot know based on the photo alone.
2
Neonicotinoid pesticides are the worst. Maryland banned them from residential use earlier this year. When I visited my parents this summer, I saw hundreds of butterflies while walking on the C&O Canal by the Potomac River. The last few years I visited, before the ban, I never saw more than 1-2 butterflies total. I saw more birds this year as well. Ban neonicotinoids
141
@Ted B, I just looked that up. There are brands containing neonicotinoids (Green Light is one of them) that are promoted as “biological controls.” That’s horribly misleading. Advantage tick and flea treatment for dogs also contains one!
I used to spray with fungicide and pesticide, twenty or more years ago. I used the so-called natural products mostly, but also used more toxic rose sprays. I was always fighting some pest or fungus. When I stopped using all that stuff and let my garden decide what would flourish, I stopped having insect infestations. I haven’t seen a thrip in years, and they used to be a plague. Ditto various beetles. The birds that come in for water and the seed I put out stick around to scavenge among the the plants. Many of them nest here. They eat the insects and feed them to their babies (even seed eaters eat bugs when nesting). I have loads of native tree frogs in the garden, too (tadpoles galore this year!), and they eat bugs. It’s a healthy ecosystem now. We have bobcats and foxes hunting the native rabbits, so the bunnies aren’t decimating my plants. Pumas keep the local deer population down. We have raptors helping with the rodents, but nothing can keep up with the breeding of gophers and pack rats. I use rat zappers when necessary for rats around the outside of our house (an efficient and humane control). I leave the voles, moles and shrews alone. Gophers...I trap sometimes. No one is pure.
37
I haven’t seen one mention, either in this article, nor the comments, about the number of birds killed by our wind farms.
4
Polyethylenetereraphalate is not easily recycled. It’s reused.
One of the birds I miss here near the Blue Ridge are the yellow bellied sapsuckers that would come in the early summer to peck away at the big maple out back. We haven't seen any in about ten years.
In spite of it being a good year for acorns, not may blue jays have been by as well. The squirrels are getting them all.
4
My wife struggles to buy natives, the local greenhouses want to sell showy exotics or lookalikes. Just because it’s penstemmon doesn’t mean it’s the correct penstemmon for your area. And yes, that makes a difference to the insects and birds.
7
Plastic is in Everything. I remember when all Chinese takeout was in those white cardboard cartons, with the little wire handles. Now they use plastic containers which you can't reheat in, and they won't put the chow mien in the cartons even if you ask. And the food is delivered in the plastic bag.
11
Great suggestions. Your comment about keeping cats indoors is right on the money but seems to be made almost in passing, failing to convey the deadly and extreme seriousness of this problem. See
https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/
and
https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/:
“the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists domestic cats as one of the world’s worst non-native invasive species.”
“Predation by domestic cats is the number-one direct, human-caused threat to birds in the United States and Canada. In the United States alone, outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year. Although this number may seem unbelievable, it represents the combined impact of tens of millions of outdoor cats. Each outdoor cat plays a part.” [And the carnage is not limited to birds: when cats are allowed to roam free, expect the entire suite of small vertebrates to disappear.]
Wealth of info on and hyperlinked to these two pages.
6
This report is utterly terrifying---as is how little general attention seems to have been paid to it.
6
No mention of the deaths caused by wind turbines.
3
We are all lesser for this loss that we have all noticed. Again, science make the invisible, visible and we will be better off once we feel this and believe in this most fundamental human activity. It is a shame that we actually elect people who deny scientific conclusions and accept propaganda and nonsense instead.
2
It doesn't take much to notice that crows and blue jays are missing. No shrieks and cawing. Everywhere I travel in my tri-counties, I don't see the requisite crows that normally dart around at the edges of the road for carcasses. The pest birds are depleted this year. They are my canaries. This is frightening.
3
Birds are dying because builders and landlords are killing them
I well remember a construction site for a house in apple valley back in the 80’s when I was a kid and seeing 5-6 finches and sparrows of beautiful colors all dead and laid out in a line .
Avicides should be banned .
6
The birds are dying. That is a sign for educated people to stop having children. Do you need a billboard?
5
This trend is also evident in Seattle. Between the rampant rate of construction and tree loss, there are far fewer birds than 20 years ago. Gypsy moth spraying decimated what butterflies and moths we had and the birds declined considerably after. Now we have sugar ant infestations and people are hiring exterminators who say the poison is safe - but tell that to the fading flickers that eat the ants. We need a green revolution - which includes the absolute need to find alternatives to pesticides before they break the food chain.
8
Approximately 120 million more people in the US now than in 1970. New US homes today are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973 and living space per person has nearly doubled. More people consuming more resources means fewer resources for wildlife.
8
I live on a lake in Northern British Columbia. We have owned the property since 1988, summering here every year until finally retiring here in 2010. After reading this article I went to my bird books and checked the lists of observed birds from 1988 until now. The 1990s show about thirty different species from wrens to bald eagles. This year? Perhaps ten. The eagles and ospreys are fine as are the magpies and crows. The geese, ducks and swans still fly through. The loons are still wailing. But the song birds are gone. The deck of my house is level with the
Poplar canopy overlooking the lake. All summer, no observable avian activity. Something is very wrong.
7
@Alison Cartwright
I should also add that we have had virtually no mosquitoes, blackflies or wasps. This is virtually unheard of in Northern Canada.
7
Sorry, correction—that is birdsafe.ca
During the W administration, the fossil-fuel industry hired PR-man Frank Luntz to figure out how to turn a largely-environmentalist congress against proposed carbon regulations that were meant to address climate change. Perhaps we should hire this same mercenary to figure out how to get congress to fix the mess he helped create.
3
In this article there seems to be implied equation of correlation with causation. Perhaps the situation is as this article both states and implies. However, looking past the headline of the referenced study to the abstract (the study itself seems to be behind a paywall), what we see is methodological limitations that could account for the headline conclusion of three billion fewer birds.
Things may be as bad as implied, but if we are to be "scientific" and develope policies that will improve conditions, we need to avoid imprecision and unconscious bias because of our expectations and fears.
3
@Steve Fankuchen What is it you're saying? Put it in simple terms. That you can't see the study doesn't mean it isn't factual. You're drawing a lot of conclusions that aren't based on anything, the same thing you're accusing the author of doing. Lighten up.
4
A chemical-free garden would be a bad idea, since birds typically don’t thrive without oxygen gas.
Seriously, the use of the term “chemical-free” perpetuates a misunderstanding of our world and the science needed to save birds. As an example, despite being “all-natural”, the decorative nandina plant has berries that contain a chemical toxic to birds. Other plants contain nutrients (chemicals) that birds need to survive, and grow better with water and fertilizer. Chemicals can be good or bad or both depending on the circumstances.
4
After scanning through the comments, I have two things to add. First, here in rural and exurban California we live with the threat of wildfires. Many of the measures we must take to protect our homes — mowing dried grasses and brush, limbing up trees, maintaining wide bands of cleared land around structures — can end up destroying bird habitat. I have neighbors who have essentially nuked their multi acre properties for fire clearance. But it is possible for wildland adjacent properties to be both fire safe and wildlife friendly. As long as plants around structures are well watered and (preferably) fire suppressive, and trees are limbed up well enough that you avoid the fuel ladder effect, you will be protected. My property looks lush — wild forest and irrigated garden, drought tolerant shrubs left to grow naturally, irrigated but fire suppressive shrubs against the house — but it passed a CalFire safety inspection with flying colors. You don’t need to mow everything down.
Second, maybe I missed it, but I didn’t see any mention of wind farms killing birds. They do so, in huge numbers.
2
@Passion for Peaches
There are far more birds killed by glass covered high rises and domestic cats than any other reason. Wind turbines are not the enemy.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/
6
This will probably sound nuts, but I've been thinking about the tons and tons of plastic that wind up in the ocean and landfills.
Also thinking about the many homeless as brought up with trump's finger pointing at CA.
Surely there are some really smart people out there who could figure out how to turn this plastic into a viable product for an actual house. With 3D printing technology couldn't this be possible. ?
Instead of finding dead whales with sixty tons of plastic in their gut, we could mass produce modest permanent shelter, the core strength of plastic but with a reasonably non flammable exterior of something like stucco. It would also reduce forest degradation.
Just a wild thought.
5
Birds are one of the few species if not the only one to have survived the impact of an asteroid 66 million years ago.
Yet, the arrival of humans has provided a more ominous threat.
7
Beautifully written and very alarming. This feeling of dread is difficult to lift but I highly recommend everyone watching The Biggest Little Farm, it is the most wonderful documentary and provides real hope for the future:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8
Young people, wake up! Get off your phones and do something now! Your elders through massive relentless and often difficult action helped end the war in Vietnam, gained rights for women and minorities, and started the first wave of interest in organic farming methods and environemental preservation.
Now it's up to you. You are inheriting this earth. Fight for it as though your lives depended on it.
15
And you get off your phone, too.
@Deborah
Greta Thunberg and the Friday strikes?
1
I have a palo verde tree that unexpectedly died this spring. I have noticed a lot of birds in the very dead branches remaining. I have been slowly disposing of broken branches but now may leave the dark, dried trunk (which has a certains sculptural quality) in place if it helps the birds survive our hotter and drier summers. Most of my neighbors are people-do-not-affect-climate morons, but that doesn't mean I can't do my part to protect our birds.
9
I've been counting birds at my feeders for Project Feederwatch of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for many years and the drop in birds over the past fifteen years at my current address is very apparent. I live in a semi-rural area -- not a lot of construction, plenty of forest, fresh water, marshes, fields and two lane roads -- all conducive to birds and the fact is -- there aren't as many birds as there were and it is more obvious with each passing year. All species are affected and it is truly an upsetting situation. As far as I know, there are no people keeping track of the rabbit and frog population but they are diminished too. If I see one wild rabbit per year that's a lot as opposed to as recent as ten years ago when it was common to see wild rabbits in yards and fields in my area. Same with frogs -- haven't seen a frog in the past three years whereas in summers prior I'd see frogs on our patio and sidewalks. Yes, we are killing the animals, plants, trees and the birds and pretending that we aren't also killing ourselves -- the so-called "smart" animal with our careless and destructive response to the environment.
14
The end of fracking would help. Natural gas fracking and its boom in the U.S. is an ecological disaster for birds, animals and humans.
6
Certified wildlife habitats - in backyards, churchyards, schoolyards and municipal spaces can help us appreciate and get back to nature. The National Wildlife Federation has easy guidelines, and it’s free!
Plus No Child Left Inside - encourage schools to let children play outside, exploring their natural environment.
If we don’t all step up now, there will be no tomorrow worth saving.
5
Cell phone towers and satellite networks certainly interfere with bird, bat and insect navigation, yet the author doesn't mention their influence on diminishing populations.
4
@martha
Here are the real killers
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-cats-180960505/
1
Home Depot, Lowes and the like can help by permanently cancelling their RoundUp orders. This is a great example of profit before principals. People like Bill and Melinda Gates need to move away from the Monsantos of the world. And, how many of us truly need our SUVs? Safeway and the other major grocers don't seem to care at all about human health, much less the health of our planet. Time for all of us to stop it with the mentality we're not killing ourselves.
8
Margaret,
In your personal catalogue of the creatures of which there are fewer, you forgot to mention lightnin' bugs (the succinct spondee "firefly" has an impact on the ear but is insufficiently descriptive and was never heard in the Atlanta where I grew up). They seem to have never made it across the deserts or over the Rockies to face decimation in my current neck of the freeways, but I hear that the abundant lightin' bug galaxies of my childhood summer nights in the Southeast are indeed a thing of the less-polluted past.
4
Everywhere is different. I came home late from work to find a “galaxy of fireflies” in Prospect Park.
Glorious.
@Vivienne
Yes, indeed, dear Vivienne: different strokes for different folks; but their fire was in lightning strokes
rather than the steady burn of of a flame. But
you'll insist that flames flicker, so I will cry "Uncle"
and bid you a pleasant goodnight.
I volunteer for an organization called FLAP that is devoted to the issue of bird-building collisions. No one should underestimate the impact of these on bird populations. During migration season, I patrol one building, once a week, for about half an hour each time, and it’s rare that I don’t find a bird or two. Just multiply that by the number of buildings across the continent. Btw, sticking bird-shaped silhouettes on your windows has been shown not to work. The website birdsafe.org has guidelines and ideas on how to make windows safer. This can really make a difference!
4
Sorry, the website is at birdsafe.ca
1
An analysis by Canadian researchers Stanton, Morrissey and Clark that was published last year in Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment identifies changes in agricultural practices over the past 50 years that have been major drivers of the sharp decline in North American birds associated with grasslands and farmlands. Studies like this can help us to prioritize conservation actions that will have the biggest impacts. Conversion of essential grassland habitats to agriculture has been a major factor in the decline of birds. With only 4% of the original tallgrass prairie left in North America, protecting what remains is critical. While pesticide use is often cited as a factor in the decline of birds, it appears that it is specifically insecticides that are most harmful to birds: both directly as toxins and indirectly by reducing populations of insects. For example, the insecticide imidacloprid is used as a “seed dressing” on corn kernels. Ingestion of a single imidacloprid-coasted kernel of corn can kill a medium-sized bird. Nearly 40% of corn grown in the US is converted to bioethanol, a subsidized use of land that displaces production of food crops and contributes little to either energy independence or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Here is a case where a major conservation benefit could be realized by reducing government spending.
7
Part of the problem is not reversible. Have you noticed the timing of the seasons has shifted? It seems to me like all the seasons here have moved back about a month. Spring arrives later, more in May than April, summer has shifted to July rather than June, fall doesn't start until late October or early November, winter doesn't come until January. Migratory birds evolved to move in an exquisitely timed dance, so that food supplies were available along their routes. With insect populations not only declining but their reproductive timing changing, plants blooming at different times, and storms being less predictable, the birds' instinctive migration patterns are no longer in sync. Unfortunately, evolution takes a long time to change that programming.
6
Here in the North East the explosion of deer populations has left the woods without an understory, this used to be a rich source of both food in the form of nuts and berries as well as insects. It is certainly a part of the problem.
Tax lawns!
6
Environmental catastrophe is happening more quickly than even the most pessimistic predictions. No birds, no pollinators, no clean water or air, no fish coming to your neighborhood.
Guess we’ll learn if we can eat money.
14
We have successfully killed the birds foods and their environments, and poisoned much of what is left for them. Be thankful we have as many left as we do, and vote for politicians at all levels who are willing to take on Chemical, oil and agricultural interests.
4
I wonder if the cooler operating LED lights are harder on the insects. They confuse the light with the moon. That’s why they keep circling. Could be that the heat of the old type lamps clued them in that it was not the moon, and they went about their business. A theory anyway.
3
As a cat owner with 8 (yes 8) indoor cats (we don't entertain people), I strongly urge people to keep cats strictly indoor, not even indoor-outdoor.
Cats are healthier indoors, with fewer fights, picking up diseases, getting poisoned, shot, run over, or eaten by coyotes. They are programmed to go after birds, and some estimates of the annual bird mortality due to cats are in the billions.
I've often heard "the cat wants to go out." The cat wants to be on the other side of a door, gate, or window. They will do just fine indoors, cleaner, subject to fewer diseases.
There is no optimal way to deal with feral cats, other than perhaps trap-neuter-release, which only stops their breeding, not the killing of birds. Banning breeding for profit would be a start, and adopting from a shelter, in addition to supporting one, are alternatives. Once all wanted cats live in homes, those left are feral.
I'm also a member of Audubon.
12
@Mike S., this made me chuckle: “As a cat owner with 8 (yes 8) indoor cats (we don't entertain people)...”. I have just two dogs who mostly hang out in the house, but we don’t entertain people, either. I totally get it. ;-)
7
Sometimes I think that everything I love in this world is doomed.
15
Get mad and do something. Sadness cures nothing
4
Part of the solution is stop over human reproduction everywhere -- e.g. in Brazil and Indonesia, rain forest is being burned even as I type so that food crops and those awful soybeans can be sown. Limit how much excess food farmers can produce annually -- most of the substandard food sold to the school lunch programs gets tossed uneaten and much thrown out unsold at the grocery store. (280 Billion $$ per annum in the USA.)
Stop all development - public and private -- no more highways (paid for by the tax payer) for the benefit of Foxcomm or anyone else. Reuse land that has already been used for industry. Stop building suburbs. Build in cities housing where many families can live (oh my I guess people will have to learn to get along better!!!) limit parking drastically, more public transportation, share private vehicles-- hurry up with googld cars.
Make Roundup illegal (Yup Bayer, stupid to buy Monsanto). Stop starving birds and bugs including the monarch butterflies. Thinking about horrible Central Park management-- why begonias where there could be Touch-me-nots? Where are spring flowers? (Dogtooth violets, Jack in the pulpits, spring beauties, etc.) And what is going on lawns? that horrible grass seed full of pesticides and herbicides-- no poison ivy, no thistle, no clover, and no fireflies (the larvae live in the soil). At any rate, weeding in a healthy activity.
Make all cats that are outside and without ID liable to being exterminated. Etc.
4
I think a big problem is all the invasive plant species that harm natural habitats for wildlife. At the Elizabeth A Morton National Wildlife Refuge in Long Island, the mile a minute plant is taking over, covering & killing trees & bushes.
6
considering that rivers and air are less polluted now than they were 50 years ago (aside from a higher concentration of CO2), it does not seem to be pollution. Encroaching on their habitats, decimating insect and fish populations that these birds eat might be two reasons.
How many birds are killed each year by cats? Among the solution the author offers, this one is probably the biggest culprit of birds disappearing from cities and suburbs.
I've read a ton of articles from many sources and they all agree they don't really know why the birds are disappearing. But I've had cats my entire life and know them to be little killing machines. I've kept my cats indoors for many years because my outdoor ones would kill 3 or 4 birds and as many mice every day. Domestic cats and feral cats aren't responsible for all the decline but they must account for a large percentage. I love my kitties but I'm under no delusion that they kill for fun because they're felines and that's what felines do.
4
The underlying problem is human over-population. Over-population is not just about housing and jobs, it increases agricultural demands, the more food needed, the more argument for pesticide use, GMO's, monocultural agriculture and loss of bird-wildlife habitat.
The US population would be stable or even decreasing if not for immigration. Immigration is falsely portrayed as an issue of racism. In fact, population control regards sustainability that allows for co-existence with other species.
The GOP is wrong on just about anything environmental. However, the Dems are tone-deaf on issues of population and immigration. Please educate them.
For it comes down to this: You can have birds, wildlife, healthy habitats and intact ecosystems. Or you can have more people. But you can't have both.
7
What happened to the passenger pigeons? The pollution must have been terrible.
3
“wildlife needs are human needs.” Why is this true? If most of non-human animal life was exterminated, could humans survive without them? Sure, foods that require pollinators would be gone, but there are plenty that are wind-pollinated. This article does not satisfactorily explain the connection. And I don’t think the population as a whole understands it either. Scientists need to do a better job explaining the criticality of nature to the average person.
1
With 30% of the worlds insects disappearing over the last 40 years, why the big surprise that their main predator, birds, are disappearing at a similar rate? Species collapse is upon us, and putting bird feeders and water in your yards won't turn the tide.
5
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
4
Humanity has been around for the tiniest tick of time. If we don’t think that the possibility of our extinction, along with countless other species, we are truely fools. Look people, we might not understand it, but Planet Earth is, in its own way, alive, as is our Universe. We are acting like a virus to our planet, rather than the good shepherds we should be.
7
@Cliff R - To me, the earth appears to be a living organism. And, watching some documentary one night, I learned that there had been around 5 or 6 ice ages before the dinosaurs that completely wiped out all of life on the planet. The earth seems to be fascinated playing with its legos trying out the infinite combinations of DNA. And, like a bored child, its seems to grab its Etch-a-Sketch and shake everything up and start all over.
(no, I am not voting for Marianne Willamson although I play her on television)
Every highway should be planted with local grasses and flowers and the mowing schedule kept to a minimum. Those awful office "parks" should be planted with meadows instead of grass and hedges. There should be a moratorium on construction in open spaces and instead re-purpose buildings and malls that are already here. And humans should STOP PROCREATING!!
We are a scourge on this planet. Don't you see it?
8
Please, homeowners, pull and cut out weeds in your lawn. If you don't care about impacts to our environment, and the health of insect and bird populations - then care, selfishly, about carcinogens!
3
@common sense advocate
Better yet, get rid of the lawn. Lawn are sterile deserts as far as birds and insects are concerned.
2
What can we do?
Maybe a global one-child policy for the next 200 years?
No. Too extreme.
How about starting to talk about overpopulation and its effects on the environment?
No. Not a permitted topic.
But you can build a brush pile in your back yard for songbirds. That's something. And don't forget to eat less meat. And no plastic straws. Help save the planet.
6
Renkle underscores a disturbing phenomenon that has been widely publicized lately.
However, her proposed garden “solutions” aimed “toward giving birds a better chance” are like putting a band aid on someone who has been in a serious auto accident and is bleeding profusely.
Her article would have been much more effective if she had focused on “the political will to address climate change” – particularly in Tennessee, a state that continues to elect climate deniers to public office including Donald Trump.
And what about addressing New Nashville’s definition of prosperity? Renkle has a national pulpit here in the Times and could use it more boldly.
The “affluence zone that is the New Nashville” doesn’t care about birds – only about being cool, hip, and wealthy. Nashville is the perfect symbol for America’s new definition of prosperity and the mindset that accepts vast inequality and degradation of the environment in service to economic prosperity that serves fewer and fewer people. Nashville has sold its working-class soul.
Nashville’s music industry will undoubtedly be blind to the irony that city is pushing out what was once its heart and soul: working-class people. Like the birds, the working class is disappearing from Nashville as the city becomes too expensive for them to live in.
Nashville has given new meaning to the old Lefty Frizzell song – “If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.” The title reflects the spirit of the New Nashville. Birds? Not so much.
4
Our moronic mindless species will not do what's necessary. We will continue to use plastic bottles of water (look at your desk as you're reading this - plan to recycle that bottle of water there? Or quit buying single use bottles altogether? Didn't think so.), refuse to be even slightly inconvenienced for the sake of the planet's welfare, consume everything mindlessly, breed to the point of annihilation, ignore the planet as it begins to shrug off our species, unfortunately, along with millions of others. And for what reason? More riches, more power, more prestige, more money. Addicts to money are running/ruining the world. Literally.
7
The two greatest sins of the human race is how we continue to murder each other, and our systematic destruction of this planet. We our a suicidal race.
3
The highway to Hell is paved with good intentions. All the remedies prescribed by ms Renkl are sound and if applied consistently would earn her house and garden top praise among the cognoscenti and illuminati of the upper crust of American society, and precious little beyond that.
The study numbers are not as shocking as their utter disregard by the EPA and a whole segment of blind indifferent citizens.
The lack of reaction is aggravated by the surge in consumption of the kind we have here in Brazil, where even the indigenous tribes of the Amazon have sided with president Bolsonaro demanding their share of cellphones, economic development and accelerated deforestation of their so far protected territories.
3 billion dead birds tell us the viability of life on our world is threatened, and yet apart from a few million people walking in protest ,there is no joint effort put a serious global plan together. Just more closed borders , foolish populist surges, and social media navel gazing.
As long as we keep asking for more ,we won't be able to join forces and ask for less in a convincing manner.
7
Hello humans, stop breeding.
Sincerely,
The Birds
10
Except for the few worldwide activists and a relative amount of people who do care about wildlife and the planet the majority of the human species does not. Some countries like Iceland have taken the lead.
The fossil fuel companies need to be put out of business. There is no reason whatsoever that the majority of both residential homes and businesses in the U.S. should not be using solar power by now.
President Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House in the mid 1970's until Reagan had them taken down immediately upon taking office. Just think where we would have been today if Carter's vision would have taken hold.
8
My front yard is a Wild Bee sanctuary. I live car free so I see the concentration of life around my house as I come and go. We feed the birds now and provide them with water.
I love this planet! It’s a great place to live! I know it will change and become uninhabitable for humans but I am grateful for the experience and will do whatever I can for those other species.
7
I have no idea why this info surprises anyone. Efforts to kill bugs and birds have only accelerated since Carsen's Silent Spring-- it's not only the frogs! We can... outlaw the use of Roundup -- stupid to buy Monsanto Bayer; stop development of open land (private or public-- as in England); take down Wall Street by raising interest rates (the FED is complicit) and tax codes. (make high salaries and cap gains less valuable esp. for real estate developers...right now a privileged group in terms of taxation. We need more cities (dense housing), fewer suburbs.
Everything animal needs to eat. And all sorts of insects, birds, bats are dying from starvation. We could grow fewer soybeans for export, grow less food to be thrown away to the tune of 280 billion a year... and stay human reproduction -- again tax practices could make a difference. How we get the other countries where the birth rate (and now survival) is IMO out of control to curb the reproduction of its citizens I do not know. Losing habitat is not only a US problem (rain forest burning Brazil, Indonesai -- for food crops...)
But mostly MEN (who are in power) seem to care only about power and $$ and progeny in some cases. Time for women of the world to unit and in Nancy Reagan's words start saying NO. All of the awful men in power were cute little boys once upon a time. Whatever happened?(Why are we women so complicit?)
6
Greta Thunberg has it exactly right. How dare we , and more pointedly, climate deniers particularly, subsume our duty to the young and to right and wrong while we’re at it, and for what? More economic growth? More personal status? For virtue signaling of our lack of virtue? Answers to these questions are hard to pin down.
The old saw, all hate is self hate, might be a start. As Greta cried, “ how dare you?”
5
At one point there were millions of Buffalo on the Great Plains, grizzly bears throughout and a complete and diverse habitat of flora and fauna. And now, we have concrete and iPhones, not to mention Netflix and slot machines. Surprise, surprise....in a matter of years the next extinction will be the climate deniers and trumps deplorables. Well, maybe not the deplorables. You can fix just about everything, but not stupid.
3
Michigan intends to spray entire counties and communities with aerosolized pyrethrins. The intent is to kill mosquitoes that carry EEE, Eastern Equine Encephalitis. Supposedly this spraying will be done at night, so as not to affect bees and other pollinator insects. There is an offhand note that these compounds are deadly to water-dwelling animals like fish.
I'd like to know how to "cover" the large ponds on my property, which are left to their own natural devices, and how this spraying will affect nocturnal animals like insect-eating bats. My entire backyard has white clover, which attracts bees; will the spray be gone by the next morning? I'd also like to know the reason behind the recommendation that we close our windows, if this spraying is so "harmless."
The national total of deaths from EEE appears to be 10.
9
@Hypatia - my community of 240 people has a small truck with a smoker - the smoke wagon. That's what I call it. When the smoke wagon goes around I notice virtually no damage to peripheral populations of insects. Whatever they're using seems to leave fireflies, night moths, crickets, cicadas, flies, bees, butterflies, etc without bad effect. Hopefully your community will be as careful and minimize adverse effects on the good guys but knock out the skeeters.
1
The "Big Bad Federal Government" has been, and can be, an answer. Does anyone think the environment would be better today without the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and federally supported programs for cleaner air and water?
We're not anywhere near we need to be about the use of herbicides and pesticides, but does anyone think toxic effects would have been less without the EPA and its scientists?
How about "beefing up" requirements for livestock, so the true cost is paid for, rather than socializing the detrimental costs of factory animal farming? Same for all those crop farms. Cheap food really is not cheap in true economic terms, if all the health effects are considered. But it can still be made affordable and a whole lot safer.
We have the means and the resources to do much better. But, with respect to so many ills we have created, politicians refuse to lead, and would rather be led by those who do not want to pay for the harms they have created (and believe that they will be long gone from this earth when things get much worse for those left behind.)
If each of us did something, the numbers would help. But we've never achieved big changes without an active federal government behind all those something's we all should be doing to help save the planet.
3
I have been doing all the things this article suggest we do to stop this apocalypse of birds (and insects). But the best an individual can do is do what they can and hope for the best.
But no one is addressing the single most devastating thing that we are doing to the planet -- overpopulating it. As we take up more and more space, there is less and less space for every other species and until most of us realize this, we really are doomed.
And in case anyone is wondering what I've done about that, I made a conscious effort many years ago not to have children. Although I think it is too late to save the planet, I wish that more people would do the same.
7
What are the causes of this decline?Air quality and herbicide use, alongside land use change from development or agricultural practices cry out for further study. Based on the disappearance of bugs on windshields everywhere, it looks suspiciously like a chemical cause. Enquiring minds want to know!
4
First, I never use chemicals of any kind on my yard. Also, I have allowed a few native plants to take up permanent residency amid the roses and have found that pokeberries are very appealing to both resident & migratory birds. Ditto for virginia creeper, which also produces small berries in the fall. During migration, my wake-up ritual involves grabbing my binoculars and scanning the yard for visitors before getting myself to work. Over the past week I've seen robins, mockingbirds, thrashers, catbirds, blue-jays, thrushes, eastern peewees and a northern flicker. This morning, I was also visited by a yellow breasted chat. https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/yebcha/introduction
The bird's yellow chest was brighter than McDonald's golden arches! Most of these birds were feasting on the pokeberries, using the fruit of this native plant to fuel their fall migration. My point is, I didn't have to lift a finger to reap the reward of a fabulous view of the ancient ritual of migratory birds. I didn't have to spend a penny. All I had to do was to allow nature to lead the way.
4
In Ms. Renkl's native, beloved Tennessee, the most pressing problem for native birds is the hemlock wooly adelgid. This introduced species of small white insects infest and eventually kill the Eastern hemlock tree, and they have already shown up in the eastern half of Tennessee as they spread west and south.
With their heavy, drooping branches, hemlock trees are ideal refuge and nesting places for numerous species of birds. Now, entire ranges of hemlocks are being wiped out, leaving behind stark "ghost forests."
5
While we're on the subject...when was the last time you had to pull over to squeegee dead bugs off your windshield? I can remember family drives years back - 50 miles in mid-summer meant a completely spackled windshield.
A month ago I drove from Maine to NYC and the only time I used the wipers was when it rained.
8
In this article there seems to be implied equation of correlation with causation. Perhaps the situation is as this article both states and implies. However, looking past the headline of the referenced study to the abstract (the study itself seems to be behind a paywall), what we see is methodological limitations that could account for the headline conclusion of three billion fewer birds.
Things may be as bad as implied, but if we are to be "scientific" and develope policies that will improve conditions, we need to avoid imprecision because of our expectations and fears.
3
Thank you so much for sharing a concise list of what individuals can do in their own yards to be a counterweight to the devastation. Each of us bears a small responsibility based on how we choose to live. Each of us can change some of our habits in order to help.
3
Thank you for writing this. And I would add that you may want to plant berries, not necessarily native ones, as native plants will not adapt as well to a warming climate, studies show. And also that you eat a plant based diet, almost no meat, none. 51% of GHG emissions come from various aspects, in the whole picture, of animal ag. And fly only when urgent. We must get serious. Doing all the other stuff is nice, but may make no difference if we cannot get emissions down now. And when people continue to say "eat less meat" read "no meat". Please,... planet, or your plate and plane, as they say.
5
Native fauna co-evolved with native flora. Peer-reviewed research has definitely concluded that native plants are much better at supporting wildlife.
1
Way too many people. Add the inherent amorality of corporate capitalism, tribalism, human nature and magical thinking and it’s amazing that things haven’t gotten worse faster than it has.
11
"Maintain a brush pile so songbirds have a place to hide from predators."
"Let dead trees stand as nesting sites for cavity-nesting birds and a food source for insects. The insects will in turn provide protein for birds.'
"Plant fruit-and-nut-bearing trees and berry-producing shrubs. Native birds evolved to eat native plants, so make sure everything you plant is native to your area."
"Swear off herbicides and insecticides, in your yard and refrigerator. A chemical-free yard provides safe food sources for birds, and organic farms provide the same benefits on an agricultural scale."
"Keep fresh water readily available. In a drought, it’s easier for birds to find food than clean water."
"Use traps instead of rat poison, many forms of which move up the food chain to raptors, like owls and hawks, that eat rodents."
"To protect existing forests, buy sustainably sourced wood and paper products, eat less beef, drink shade-grown coffee."
"Keep house cats indoors. Even well-fed cats kill birds."
"Reduce bird collisions with glass by keeping screens up year-round or installing guards that interrupt reflections.'
"Eliminate single-use plastics, many of which end up in the oceans where seabirds consume them at lethal levels."
I can't save them all as my husband tells me so often. But at least I can help save some through the 10 measures Ms. Renkl highlighted in her article.
Hopefully at least one suggestion listed can be an important takeaway from this crucial article.
6
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/bird-apocalypse-exaggeration-of-the-research.html
"Manu Saunders, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New England in Australia who studies ecology and insect populations, and a prominent critic of the insect Armageddon narrative, made a similar point. “I think that the bird apocalypse wouldn’t have been such a big deal in the media if the insect apocalypse hadn’t happened,” she said. Much of the hype around an impending insect disaster, Saunders said, grew from media relations professionals at universities who took otherwise solid studies and misrepresented their conclusions in press releases. She’s concerned that the insect collapse hype has built a sensationalized “framing narrative” that is shaping the way both scientists and the media report on population changes in a variety of species."
Try to calm down.
3
I live at the top of a canyon full of oaks, bays, firs and pine trees in the forests of Northern CA. When I moved here some 20 years ago, I used to open my windows to the cacophony of songbirds every morning. Now there are almost none. I’m not exaggerating: It’s nearly the Silent Spring Rachel Carlson warned us about. Sadly, about all we have left are a few bluejays, some crows and a few little woodpeckers, and not many. All the other birds are gone. And its not just here- I keep hearing and witnessing the same story everywhere I go.
Remember when you were a kid and when your folks took you on a road trip, the windshield would be plastered with dead insects? I do. Now I can make an 800 miles drive with nary a mosquito squashed on my windshield. And that’s everywhere as well. There used to be armies of ants invading my house every winter- no longer- haven’t seen a single ant in my home in several years. Or a spider ( there used to be dozens,) or even a housefly, and I leave my doors open on hot nights; some are without screens.
And its also interesting that you chose to list both the insect and bird apocalypse without even positing the possibility of a correlation there. I understand scientific method. There is always room for questioning the precision of statistics, where the funding comes from and the possibility of bias. But really, when do we get to the point where we listen to the collective canaries in the coal mine? When in your estimation Is it time to be alarmed?
3
@Brian Whistler, there have been so many huge, horrible fires in your region that it must affect bird populations. I wonder about he effect of the wine industry — not far from you — as well. Vineyards are not friendly to birds. Native oaks and brush are removed so that seas of chemical drenched grapes can go in.
@Frank Knarf, your last sentence completely devalues your first paragraph. Presentation matters.
elections matter. elections have consequences. republicans are the enemies of the planet.
11
No mention whatsoever about the millions of birds and bats killed each by wind turbines and electric lines connecting them to the grid. See: Reports from American Bird Conservancy.
Too much cognitive dissonance for environmental virtue signalers?
No NYT coverage of molten salt nuclear reactors...
2
@M. Johnson.
I agree, to a degree...
What is interesting about this, is that there is so much airtime given to conservation in terms of fossil fuels, but little attention paid to actual honest-to-goodness waste, in general.
I am sure our energy supply already sufficient to support most essential things, but most of our lives are consumed by consuming the non-essential.
I think this a one subtext of Margaret's piece. Making personal choices is in some senses "voting". I am voting with my actions, and you can as well. The cumulative effect has enormous potential.
1
Blech. Decent informative article but then she pulls in politics...
It's the money stupid. Rich people don't have "brush piles", their landscapers are instructed not to let dead trees stand, and nobody's kids pull weeds anymore when there is Roundup handy.
It's the affluence, stupid.
4
@Midway It is all about the politics!
1
@Leslie M. Gaines
Oh okay...
Republicans bad, hate birds want them dead.
Liberal Dems good. Always. Love nature, not the artificial...
Don't look now, but all the elites are over consuming and killing the planet really. I'll just travel abroad to see the birds, and pay an entrance fee, even...
1
For those who can't math: 1970-2019 is 49 years. So we're looking at a decline of 0.72% a year compounded. It's not good (and we can and should take action), but I guess ***30% DECLINE*** gets more clicks.
1
@Ari Um, what is your point? That's just the same math expressed differently. The 30% number shows how continuous the decline has been for FORTY-NINE YEARS -- that's kind of an important metric, no?
5
stop building on every possible parcel of land.
4
Monsanto - Round up - glysophate 1.6 billion kilograms applied USA since 1974
9
If you are afraid of ticks, mow a walkway, put down flagstone, and leave the rest wild.
1
We’re treating the planet as if we (and our kids) are chain smoking In a windowless tenement apartment and wishing for Republicans to behave at least as sensibly as Tricky Dick. My how we have fallen.
3
The planet has to save itself from the most deadly invader it’s ever faced.
6
@RonRich
It tries to flood the invader's homes, burn them out, bring on virulent diseases, suffocation, rid them of their food supplies with heat, drought, cold and extinction, radiation. If necessary, the planet will commit suicide just to rid itself from the infestation.
3
This column perfectly shows the stark contrast to what this paper has become compared to what it used to be. It starts with information and then provides some suggestions and solutions. But then....in an effort to make sure that all factions of the left wing are appeased...it ends with nasty shots at the current president, GOP, and fossil fuel industry. Why can’t the Times publish a piece that does not end with the proverbial ugly shot-across-the-bow at the end. You are now losing even the moderate left.
Mike Kelly
1
@Mike Kelly I find it hard to believe that the moderate left, with which I identify, is jarred or resentful of the Times calling the GOP out for what it is: a science-rejecting, corrupt, disastrously short-term obsessed tool of the fossil industry. The GOP is horribly underestimating the impact that its refusal to address climate change is going to have on it in future elections. People are waking up.
12
You have GOT to be kidding me.
Add to the list: don't reproduce.
Every human on earth destroys this earth and its non-human inhabitants.
5
"The Lord shall destroy the destroyers of the Earth" - Corinthians.
Christians, if you voted for Trump, you shall meet Lucifer no matter how often you pray.
2
Thank you to Ms. Renkl for this useful, tragic piece. The birds are the beautiful tip of the iceberg, and the proposed solutions are important but far from sufficient. Yes do all this, and please press your community and leaders for a complete overhaul of how we interact with our only planet (Mars is a big zero in terms of hope for more than a handful). Clinton was so wrong - it's the environment, stupid!
2
Step #1: Vote Blue
4
When there are no cheerful bird songs at sunrise, no cooing doves in midday, no whippoorwills in the evening, let me go deaf or die. And God forgive me for whatever my part is in this.
4
40 years ago when I was a kid, there were all kinds of empty lots in the Bronx, these lots teaming with insects, the insect attracted the birds. All those lots are now apartment buildings. Fortunately we have plenty of parks in the Bronx. put aside for the populace to get quality time with nature, democratic leaders gave us these parks, the Trumps of the world if they had their way would plow over the parks and put up apartment buildings , preferably for the rich. Greed and overpopulation is dangerous in combination.
Central Park, the Bronx Parks, Prospect Park etc, this is our natural bulwark against Carbon gases, with plenty of trees for birds and squirrels, but NYC is run by democrats, while too many cities and States are run by republicans who seem to see no evil
This planet has all kinds of early warning systems. This is just one of hundreds, hundreds of alarms all going off at the same time. The republicans appear deaf, dumb and blind.
Register to vote. A political party that refuses to see the problems caused by climate change and wants to reduce Standards that regulate clean air and water, are dangerous to this planet and all other living things.
3
@Lonnie Today, empty lots in Democratic Party-controlled states like California - and now even Austin, Texas - are teeming with drug addicts living in tents. They draw the rats instead of insects OR birds, and public employees run a strong risk of contracting typhus or the plague.
Like birds? Elect Republicans or Libertarians.
I feel like we are all watching a train wreck in slow motion, and most of our legislators are content to watch it happen, because they will be gone before it crashes into them. Apparently, none of them have, or care about children.
3
Wake up folks ! The Earth is dying and we're the cause. Plot the growth of the human population vs. the available food resources. When the lines cross, there is starvation and famine. We're almost there. Climate change is accelerating the process. Migration from Central America is caused by decreasing food resources, not "people wanting our lifestyle". Our answer? Build big wall to keep them out...
2
The only thing we can do about it is go back in a time machine and vote for Al Gore instead of Ralph Nader. We would be well on our way to carbon-neutrality, if not there, and fewer birds would be dead. But instead we elected Bush, and now Trump, who have speeded up extinction and in reality there's no going back. Enjoy bird-song while it lasts.
3
An interesting article about an important and alarming phenomenon. Add to it an item further down the page about the response of mortgage brokers to climate change, and still further down an item about declining salmon stocks, and you have today’s New York Times electronic front page coverage of the climate crisis and environmental disaster. That’s considerably better than today’s Washington Post, which has nothing on these topics on its electronic front page, unless you count an article about the heavy snow in Montana.
This disturbs me, particularly because these are the newspapers run by the, "good guys".
2
@writeon1
Yes, I've written emails to every journalist and every editor of every major news outlet to please use their platform wisely and cover the climate crisis like the front page news it has been since the 1990s.
It's insane that we are the people living in the final moments when there is still time to act and save ourselves, and yet everyone's going about their day like we're not facing the most pressing issue humanity has ever dealt with.
It's madness.
Outside of democracy now and a few other independent outlets, it's easy to see just how much the big money interests control our thinking, our concerns, our ability to sleepwalk right into eco and societal catastrophe.
This is criminal.
Anything short of revolt is completely irresponsible at this point.
It means, simply, that our species has maybe 8-10 years left on this planet.
It’s too late to do anything about it. We’re done here.
1
@Steven
"... our species has maybe 8-10 years …"
Agree, but I would put it at 50-100 years.
1
The population of the United States has gone from 180 million people when I was born to 335 million today. Everything above 200 million is the result of immigration. White Americans have had below replacement fertility since 1969. Japan and Western Europe have below replacement fertility. China implemented a one child policy which lasted for 40 years and will result in a significant decline in population over the next 30 years. It is not my job to sacrifice any more. My family has been sacrificing fertility for close to a hundred years. The Catholic Church and fundamental Islam need to labeled ecological terrorist organizations for their opposition to family planning.
2
I keep hearing that 29% of birds are gone, since 1970. But just 5 years ago, my yard was filled with birds and nesting activity. If you left your window open at night, you would be awakened at dawn by the songs from hundreds of birds.
Something more is afoot. I suspect the majority of loss is over the last 5 years. Why? Is it the spraying for mosquitoes that now everywhere? That is the only real change I've observed. Not saying pesticides isn't a problem, and I certainly recognize the impact of solar and wind turbines (cannot be denied, and quite a stupid attempt for sustainable energy), but there is something more recent that is killing our birds.
2
Birds, bats, insects, animals, plants....all dying off at a frightening pace. It's all too easy to push the terror of what could happen back in your head "for another day" but we can't any longer. We have to act NOW.
1
This just seems too depressing to contemplate.
3
"Bird deaths from climate - change will make Rachel Carson's - spring silent again"; "Trump's denial of - climate change is worse than his - treasonous phone calls"
1
Last week I actually used that old phrase "like a canary in a coal mine". The young person (25?) I was speaking to was not familiar with it or its significance
Why are we failing? We are ignorant
2
This should have been no surprise. We humans have been spreading poisons throughout out environment for years. We've been cutting down or destroying native plants and forests at a tremendous rate. The coal, oil, and gas extractive industries produce waste products that are toxic and lethal to birds. And now Trump and his acolytes are reversing, eliminating, or weakening the environmental gains of the past 50 years. The earth has AIDS and the virus particles are human beings. We call ourselves Homo Sapiens but we are not; rather we are Homo Stupidius well down the road to utterly destroying the only world we have; the only home we have ever known. I don't feel that bad for humanity; we seem to have known what we were doing but would not stop. I mourn for all the beautiful innocent species that will perish because of humanity's cravenness and utter stupidity.
1
You are correct Margaret, we are seeing the same things happen in our town as it is all over. We have to create a world where as many species as possible can cohabit the Earth, to do less is utter foolishness.
1
All I know is that I can’t even have my bird feeders anymore because they attract cats.
Squirrels are a different story!
The frenzy and angst behind this editorial and the publication that makes the "3 billion bird" claim is a sign of the ongoing decline in science journalism and how researchers and institutions are complicit.
Birds, just like all biota on the planet, are in trouble but the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's major public relations campaign on these "findings", and the media's eagerness to not question an institution's self-serving press releases, is not raising the level of discussion.
Anyone wanting to know what the study really found out should look at the articles at these links:
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/bird-apocalypse-exaggeration-of-the-research.html
https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/did-north-america-really-lose-3-billion-birds-what-does-it-mean/
Hoping someone from the NY Times editorial board might issue a correction. Misleading editorials like this just feed the agenda of people denying our ongoing ecological crisis.
1
Another horrific story of the earth’s demise caused by Homo sapiens insatiable gluttony for more junk, trinkets, toys of false pleasure, the knickknacks of life capitalists insist we need. Rachel Carson’s springs are mainly silent. I have little hope things will change. We’ve caused too much damage. We sell our souls for a one-use grocery bag, for a bloody rare beef steak, for another vacation to Disneyland.
2
What does it mean?!?
To paraphrase a line from “The Departed”, we’re all on our way out, act accordingly.
1
Nixon created the EPA only because he feared being “outflanked” by Democrats on environmental issues. Imagine that in our bipolar world!
2
We humans forget how habitat destroying, our houses are. Windows are the number 2 killer of birds. Our house cats are the number 4 killer of birds. Houses have far more windows, than they used to have. Our disposable plastics choke birds, get stuck in their limbs, fill their guts. Meanwhile people continue to throw their trash, cigarette buts, empty vape cartridges, empty food packaging, soiled baby diapers, worn out fishing gear, still use lead shot in their hunting shotguns, pour used motor oil down storm drains. Most perpetrators are aware that their lifestyle damages their ecosystem, but they rationalize it, away, by pretending that everyone does it, that the Earth is vast and can absorb any insult. Our biosphere is dying the death of a trillion cuts. Three billion dead birds in North America for three billion plus irresponsible humans.
2
Step 1: Impeach a criminal president who is making it easier for companies to send polluting emissions into the air to harm people in the name of making some more money.
So, that's one thing we could do.
1
The alarms of varying kinds have been going off for decades and humankind, through some combination of hubris, stupidity and cultivated ignorance, has largely ignored them. Whether it's too late to take significant remedial action is not something we can truly know but we're bound to try. What choice do we have? Meanwhile a question worth asking ourselves is this: Can the earth truly sustainably support the immense demands for resources of all types that humankind places on it over the long haul? The answer might well be 'No'.
1
We do all that you list, but since we live on a farm we don't control our cats. They kill the vermin on the ground, too.
In less than my lifetime--only fifty years--3 BILLION birds lost. If it were 3,000,000,000 powerful, wealthy, white, heterosexual, "so-called" Christian males, I wonder if a concerted effort would be undertaken to stop their deaths?
I doubt it. For as Greta Thunberg stated in her address to world "leaders" at the United Nations last week, "This is all wrong...People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!"
These folks? They don't even care about their own kids and grandkids.
2
In the 1960's when I first lived in Brooklyn, I woke to the sound of what was surely a thousand birds singing at once. It sounded like an ocean wave. I lived in a rooming house a block from the beach, and I often think of that sound. I don't know when it was I first noticed it was gone. I've often wondered what happened to those songbirds whose sound was silenced. I hoped it was just that they moved over to Jamaica Bay once the wildlife refuge was created but I know that's just a wishful thinking. The same thing happened when I was in the mountains and noticed the sound of frogs and especially bull frogs was absent. I know a lot of careless people think it doesn't matter, it's not like they're food for us or anything. So I appreciate this article. All life on earth matters. And for the individuals who only think human life matters, consider the canary. And then consider that in this case, the coal mine is earth.
1
One thing left off this: spay and neuter your cats. And keep them indoors.
1
Too bad even this issue has partisan overtones...getting rid of Trump is not going magically bring back birds populations.
In this area the biggest problem is feral cats but many feel non native cats have the same value as endangered birds. Our native redwing blackbirds are being superseded by imported starlings but taking down starling nests raises the ire of so called bird lovers I've found.
Hunters are blamed, but ducks and waterfowl (that are hunted) ironically thrive and habitats saved by hunters efforts are home to many other animals. Same goes for the much hated hunters of African big game who provide major funding for wildlife preserves who are hounded and shamed..by feel good idiots imo.
Our best hope is to create micro habitats wherever possible, suburban back yards have huge potential, incentivizing land owners to creating safe nesting areas, dealing with cats and non native predators is a unpleasant necessity. Figuring out how to stop migrating song birds from being hunted in Central and South America will be most difficult.
Logic,not blind political emotion is necessary!
Please stop using chemicals in your yard! They are a temporary fix for nothing more than vanity while killing wild life and harming pets.
2
We need to start focusing on how the long-standing American practice of maintaining lush grassy lawns is impacting our local wildlife. The water it requires to maintain in so many areas is beyond wasteful. The pesticides required to maintain it destroy everything in the area and may even pose a threat to human children. And that's even before you get to the fact that you're eliminating native plants and the insects and animals that depend upon them.
It's become such a "norm" that it's hard to imagine front lawns -- which people tend not to use anyway -- filled with anything but short-cropped grass. But it's time for us to put our natural environment ahead of our aesthetic preferences. If we can't even do that, we're doomed.
3
We need more contiguous habitat. Bits and pieces don't cut it.
1
We also read that insect diversity is down. I think the two are related, Add in potential problems of under investigated newer pesticides and we probably have most of the problem.
It would be interesting to know which species are worse hit. Insectivores, vs seed eaters, migratory vs non migratory species. This would offer some insights into the causes. We are witnessing an increase in tree diseases and invasive plants and insects.
3
Thank you for this shocking wake up call.
This daily deluge of dirty politics overwhelmingly dominates the news and pollutes our lives.
We need more articles like this to inform us about the shocking decline of our wildlife.
We must generate activism to halt this alarming decline in the critical bird population on our planet.
Of course what first comes to mind is the increase of pesticides on our crops. There are many studies suggesting glysophates cause cancer in humans. Obviously many birds feast on these same pesticide covered crops in the field.
2
I wonder what effect the new "smart meters" are having. It's probably too early for anyone to have done any studies on this. And I worry what will happen once 5G goes into effect nationwide.
3
All of our data and studies are adding up to the realization that our natural systems are in the midst of major collapses not experienced since the end of the dinosaurs. The time to stop these major collapses is probably already past us as our human population and it’s material needs continues to explode. But in the end nature itself will find ways to control the human population whether through disease, war or social behavioral changes. Our young and future generations will experience this - whether the outcomes are good or bad. But right now it’s not looking too good....
3
Locally, we have at least one problem for birds not mentioned here. We cover the ground with "landscaping fabric" (black plastic) and mulch. Worms, small rodents, and insects including bees that nest in the ground have problems with them. It is all linked together. Different birds are harmed in different ways but they are harmed.
4
Antibiotic resistance is not exclusively a matter of human inconvenience. Antibiotics also make it into sewers, in low concentrations, where they teach whoever lives there new tricks.
And.
All that chicken manure laced with antibiotics, sitting in great heaps, leaching into soil and river, sold and spread as fertilizer, all of that is breeding bacteria and fungi that now know how to circumvent their neighbors defenses. The soil is infected by these. Infested.
Insects that depend on specific bacteria to digest the fibrous matter they eat are destroyed because smarter bacteria that we have trained have displaced their ancient culture.
Birds who hoped to eat those bugs starve.
Bats formerly had bacteria living on their skin that protected them from 'White Nose' fungus. Those bacteria have been displaced by antibiotic trained bacteria carried from manure heaps by insects that were then eaten by bats. Now bats die from the fungus.
The soil itself depends on a balance mediated by signaling chemicals, antibiotics, the ancient language of cells. The soil is also sick. It is infected by organisms trained by us who can't be restrained.
On top of all this neonicotinoids, are, like nicotine is, addictive to insects and they preferentially feed on contaminated plants and, obviously, die.
More poison. Spread it everywhere. Why be stingy?
2
Seeing that deceased magnificent Magnolia Warble makes me teary eyed.
He doesn't exhibit outside appearances of trauma nor injury.
It almost seems as if he "fell from the sky" and was dead before hitting a suburban lawn.
This past February, I found almost a dozen birds in our back yard. While I thought this large amount was due to the polar vortex we experienced, we had prior snow storms and brutal winters in the past and I never once saw one, much less a dozen, dead birds in a single day.
One of the little guys I found was still alive. I scooped him up and carried him inside our basement. I kept gently blowing my warm breath over his body, and kept him close to my heart where he could stay warm.
He kept watching me and for a moment I thought he was out of the woods because he started to move and breath and become more alert. And then he just died in my hands.
I know he wasn't some special song bird, just a "sputzer" as my mother would say. But I really thought I was going to save his life that morning.
Since February, I have discovered other birds who lay dead in our yard. No trauma. No injuries. They just laid there, like that beautiful Magnolia Warbler.
This is not normal. This is not natural.
If cats, dogs, people were to suddenly die like this, we would be reading a different headline.
As HN from Philadelphia stated so eloquently, " If you are worried about the loss of flora and fauna in the world, the voting choice is clear."
AMEN.
7
After reading this article, I realized I have not seen the usual assortment of birds in our suburban yard this spring or summer. No blue jays or cardinals and very few robins or even grackles. We do not use pesticides or herbicides on our yard and weeds are “controlled” manually.
While individual actions can’t hurt, we clearly need orchestrated efforts and governmental action to protect our ecosystems.
We must vote out those who will not protect the environment and vote for candidates who acknowledge the existence of environmental problems, who are not afraid of regulations and who offer plans to protect the environment...vote for these candidates in every election, at all levels of government, every chance you get.
2
I think about those lost birds as if they were lost relatives. Thinking about them in my sleep I awoke realizing that part of the count of lost birds, along with lost and poisoned habitat, would would have to be the count of lost insects they feed on. And this decimation of insect biomass may be a warning of the coming/stealthily advancing starving of every species on the planet, each in its own way as different systems go down.
2
Ever since West Nile Virus became prevalent about eight to ten years ago, the blue jay population took a real hit. I cannot remember the last time I saw a blue jay in the area. That's a shame as the blue jays used to be the "big brothers" who protected the smaller birds when hawks were in the area looking for lunch!
4
Well, the problem has been around for years, collapse of cod populations, insect populations, new species invasions, lionfish, pythons, etc., etc. What no one is willing to state, but has been evident since we worked out what killed the megafauna, is that the problem is us. We done it & will continue to. We need, in addition to all the short term band aids, to start to reduce human population growth, without which any talk of stopping the climate crisis or restoring other animals' places in the biosphere is just fancy hand wringing. No more perpetual economic growth from the economists, no more god created the world for us to exploit, as we most unquestionably have done. A strong dose of self appraisal & seriously changed behavior & living style is essential right now.
3
Seeing the same thing here in central Massachusetts. Nary a night time flicker of light any more from the fireflies. Driving your car at night and hardly a smashed bug on the windshield. The harbingers of Spring, the multitudes of grackles and red winged black birds showing up in our yards, now relegated to just a few. Humans will likely survive this, but at what cost to all the other flora and fauna that we share this planet with? Truly sad.
1
Well, along with the "insect apocolypse", the vanishing of a third of the birds that remained as of 1970 - which was only a small fraction of what existed in pre-Columbian times - we have every reason to believe that something VERY major is happening, and not at a slow pace either: it may seem slow on a human life-span, but changes on this scale in the span of a half century are in fact incredibly rapid. Many will still scream "ALARMISM!! Its not as bad as you say it is.", but they will be quite wrong. In some respects, the earth's natural systems are amazingly resilient and robust, but in other ways they are surprisingly fragile. Mankind's influence upon, and large-scale interference with these natural systems, simply cannot be safely ignored any longer... we tend to forget that we are completely dependent upon these life-sustaining systems ourselves: we may feel alienated or separated from them, but if they start to collapse, we will be affected in many ways both subtle and harsh. Mother Nature is able to "take a licking and keep on ticking", but NOT forever: a day of reckoning is coming, and while many of us may not see it, some of our children most definitely WILL... and it won't be pretty.
1
Those who study nature and natural systems are routinely finding new connectivity in these hyper-complex systems. In the 60’s and 70’s we learned about “ecosystems.” Today, we have terms such as Apex Predators and Keystone Organisms to reflect at least some of the general public’s ever-increasing understanding of nature and natural systems. Obviously, this is a fraction of what scientists have learned and know, but the process seemed to be moving in the direction of infinite or nearly infinite complexity and, more importantly, interdependency.
Which brings me to the suggestion that the current human world, one dominated by chaos, pain, suffering and destruction are linked to a the natural systems (and billions of organisms in it), are suffering similar fates.
While all this is happening right before our eyes, we can’t see the forest for the trees and like a frog with gradually heated-up water eventually dies through boiling, we are not paying attention to what is right in front of us.
And you don’t need to be a scientist to observe this. When I was growing up, some 50 years ago, when my family took a trip, every time you hit a gas station, you had to use the “bug juice.” Today, most young don’t call it that because when you make the same trips today, you don’t have to scrape off hundreds and hundreds of bugs every time you stopped for gas, less you quickly wouldn’t be able to see the road. You even had to do this to headlights.
Talk about canaries in a coal mine…
3
Lawn chem companies are part of the problem. They should definitely be banned or made to use organic pesticides.
7
We've noticed the same thing here in Chantilly. We have been feeding birds and things for over a decade. This is the 2nd year in a row that the decline has been so stark. Even the bluejays have seemed to disappear.
And for all you anti-cat types there are few feral cats or outdoor too.
Build and pave and poison spray. Your grass is green but nothing lives here today.
5
All the suggested measures are aimed at rural living, which is one of the main causes of environmental degradation. All studies show that high-density concentrated urban areas are more ecologically friendly and sustainable than the American sprawl. Do you want to save wildlife? Move to the city.
5
I haven’t noticed any decline in birds or insects in my garden, but I plant lots of different plants that provide pollen, nectar and seeds for the birds and insects. I also leave seed heads on the plants for birds to feast on despite the ratty appearance.
1
This is not the silent spring and it will not be solved by putting up nesting boxes. This has been going on for decades even if you did not notice it. The foundations of the world ecology have been severely damaged. Unless these foundations are restored more species will continue to become extinct. The possibility of restoration any time before a few centuries elapse is unlikely unless the natural world is more resilient than I think.
4
Growing up in the 1950's in the suburbs on the outskirts of San Francisco we roamed the fields as kids finding all manner of insects, snakes, lizards, frogs, newts and a huge variety of birds and butterflies. A return to those fields today (those that are left) one finds almost nothing of what once was. It was shocking. The insects are gone, ditto all the rest. Until reading other articles like this I thought maybe that what I saw was just specific to that once vibrant habitat. Seems like its everywhere now. What is going on?
4
The insect population in N America has changed dramatically in the past generation.
When was the last time you saw butterfly? How about a firefly?
Since birds are among the largest consumers of insects, the two have to be connected.
5
It's tough to be a bird lover these days, but Cornell Lab and others are helping us wake up to the signs that they provide. These little travelers offer clues about the environment where they winter and where they summer, as well as sources and supplies of food and water as they migrate--and do it all for free. You can also offer them seed year round, such as sunflower seeds and quality mixes. Put out bird seed cakes (made with fats or peanut butter) too. Birds will clean up bugs for you, including mosquitoes, aphids and ants.
I have faith that the infestation of planet destruction emanating from Washington D.C. will end. Too bad birds and all the other living things can't vote!
5
The report was certainly concerning, but also noted that some species of birds increased. Falcon populations were up 30%. The rebound of raptors and other birds of prey which were severely harmed by the bioaccumulation of pesticides such as DDT is also a negative for the population of the smallish birds which represented the bulk of the loss of the bird population as a whole. The primary predator of birds is other birds.
2
@James R. Wilson - the primary direct anthropogenic killer of birds in the US is our cats. That from one of the referenced studies linked in the Science piece she references.
S. R. Loss, T. Will, P. P. Marra, Direct Mortality of Birds from Anthropogenic Causes. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 46, 99–120 (2015). doi:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-112414-054133
Thta study doesn't try quantifying the indirect anthropogenic causes - habitat destruction, pesticides reducing insects they might feed on, etc.
But if we as a species want to be good neighbors, keeping all cats indoors or leashed is a start. Safer glass would cut impact deaths. Light management in cities and on large tower structures would help, especially during migration season. Burying power lines would be next thing after locking up our cats (and it would reduce wildfires and power outages, too).
1
Ms. Renki refers to a new study in the journal Science that nearly three billion birds have disappeared. Yes, some birds are decreasing in North America, but the numbers of some species of birds are increasing. As an avid bird watcher for more than 70 years, I can report that the numbers of bald eagles, Whooping cranes, sandhill cranes, California condors, osprey, sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks, Northern goshawks, red tailed hawks, kestrels, peregrine falcons, Euro-Asian doves, morning doves, rock doves, snow geese, Eastern bluebirds, Canada geese, sterlings, crows, ravens and probably many more that I am not aware of are increasing in numbers. Do the birds that are increasing in numbers make up for those that are decreasing? I do not know, but we should study the birds that are increasing to find out.
The biggest factor has been the increase in the human population that destroys habitat for birds. In 1960, the total population of the USA was about 181 million and today it is over 329 million--a huge increase. Birds in North America many be doing better that we think and we should have studies to quantify and verify how well they are doing.
7
The signs of the demise of our flora and fauna are everywhere. They start right next door with the all-American lawn that's maintained by a greenhouse gas-emitting mower and kept green and free of dandelions by costly herbicides/pesticides and other noxious chemicals. Further down the street, a fleet of dozers kills more of the shrinking natural world with each sweep of its earth-moving blade. Welcome to sprawl, American-style.
6
Honestly, we must price carbon. It’s the only way to reduce emissions worldwide. It’s the only way to save our planet. And it’s just the first step.
We must have laws that force oil companies to leave it in the ground and dramatically reduce emissions from all sources.
We must have a law that imposes a tariff on any goods from any country that does not price carbon.
We must have a law that gradually increases the price of carbon so our world economy will have time to adjust.
We must have a law that delivers economic stimulus into the poorest neighborhoods of our country.
Oh, wow! There is a proposed law that does all that, and more: HR763 The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.
We must call, email, and tell our Congress that We The People want them to support this bill. First. Now. Please. Please. Please.
5
@Canary Y’ Hello: Drive less. Don't fly. Don't buy products wrapped in plastic (good luck with that!). Live with ants and roaches (although DE helps, it takes more work and doesn't get rid of all of them). And have fewer children.
Get politicians on board, and find a way to stop the ones who say "these measures are a conspiracy to steal your future". Redesign the economy so that it stays healthy as activity and population shrink.
A price on converting hydrocarbons to C02 is a good start. So is European-style social democracy and a packaging industry that uses integrated recycling and reusing. In the long run, population reduction will need to happen too.
3
What about the recent science that points directly to the fact that 'neonics ' poison not just their targets- but all seeds produced on the seeds of plants soaked in the solution prior to planting? Birds cannot eat and lose an average of 6% of their body weight within hours.
Why have the feds deferred action on this?
9
About ten years ago I noticed the decline of birds/bats in my buggy backyard. The Dusk sky over my yard everyday, was quite the show as they fed. I knew the town pesticide spray policy was killing off their dinner, but had no say on stopping it.
So I started planting/allowing wild berry plants in my water abundant yard to grow controlled. Birds returned and dropped new plants like Tiger Lily and Bittersweet, which I nurtured. Long story short I have 25 different varieties of berry producing plants, wild & domestic now. With Nasturtium, Bee Balm and Milkweed patches, toads,birds, bees & butterflies were abundant this summer. Also the Monarch butterfly returned, fed and bred in my little side patch. If you plant it, they will come. Create quiet, even small, abundant spaces they will return. Wait for it, they will find your patch of life
17
The Connecticut Audubon Society has issued "State of the Bird" reports documenting the the declines for years. In 2013, the headline was "Long-term population decline is decimating aerial insectivores". In 2016, the recovery of a few species was reported, along losses in many more and the anticipated extinction of one, the Salt Marsh Sparrow.
We have also seen the collapse of insect populations; this newspaper has reported on the "Insect Armageddon". Those of us alive long enough know the "windshield phenomenon" -- car windshields used to become encrusted with dead insects but stay clean on the same trips fifty years later. Birds eat insects.
The species that are prospering are humans and their domestic animals. We have almost entirely crowded our fellow mammals off the planet, as this stunning graphic by Randall Munroe illustrates: https://xkcd.com/1338/
We have watched all this happen. Silent Spring in 1962, the first Earth Day in 1970, Limits to Growth in 1972 were responses; the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and other legacies from that time have mitigated some of the impacts without arresting the human appropriation of the planet. And since 1980 in the U.S., we have embraced a new narrative of plenty and turned our backs on this knowledge.
Now some have begun to recognize what is happening as the effects become too big to ignore. It will be harder than ever to stop and reverse the bird decline, but we have to do it, or we are next.
213
@Brian Stewart
Regarding insects on car windows: cars in have become incredibly more aerodynamic in the past 50 years.
3
@James R. Wilson
The grills and radiators haven't.
I remember driving across Kansas in the summer of 1954 when the service stations had scrub brushes and pails of water ready to clean your windshield.
12
@James R. Wilson
Ignore the evidence that's in front of all of our eyes, at your own peril though.
Are the deniers' brains more, or less, aerodynamic? Facts fly through them, but they don't stick to the windshield.
5
Lovely article. Not even remotely clear on the solutions. We're far beyond the point where making small adjustments to our gardens or in our cupboards will stop the annihilation of the birds, and so many other of our fellow creatures. Nor will electing a different party full of corporate serving fans of capitalism stop the destruction. We need to change our systems of agriculture, transportation, energy and our patterns of over-consumption - radically, and incredibly quickly. None of that change will happen through our current corrupt political system as it now operates. We need to bring the system to a halt, and soon, and replace it with one that has some chance of lasting. I want to see all those native plant gardens too, but if you want to save the birds, we need to get serious, and fast. Let's stop pretending that we can keep on living like we are, with just a few easy tweaks to the system. We can build a better world, but it will have to be vastly different than the one we now inhabit.
310
@Jeff Sher
Please keep saying this, as often as possible. Perhaps eventually we'll reach critical mass.
In the meantime, can you recommend any particular measures?
My four ideas at the moment are:
1) Nighborhood kinetic energy harvesting stations, where kids can play and adults can work out.
2) Neighborhood permaculture projects.
3) Privately funded reforestation on as large as scale as possible. (May as well get some use out of capitalism's death throes.)
4) Multi-echelon, interdisciplinary, cross-sector efforts at mitigation research. Like, all hands (and most feet) on deck. No idea where we get the money, but I guess some folks will have to cough up.
I'm always looking for better ideas, so if you have any thoughts, don't be shy.
13
@Jeff Sher
While I agree that sea change is an absolutely requisite and inevitable, we will either voluntarily adjust or catastrophic event(s) will drive us to it - nature has a way of finding the right remedy for itself. I think if individuals all engage in practices like such as those recommended(I already do all of these things) here, it raises consciousness, and it is a start, implying that once you have made these choices, you see more to follow, but most importantly, it engages people in proactively.
Money and politics have created these problems, they are not going to solve them.
6
@Jeff Sher
I don't see humanity changing fast enough to stem the destructive tide. When we have killed off nature we too will die.
It is ironic that at the peak of our knowledge we are using it to destroy ourselves with an almost total disregard of nature's needs.
29
Fantastic article - long overdue (for my complaint - below), but timely with the release of the report.
I live in Florida and feral cats are a very big problem. Trap, Neuter and Release is the common thinking of controlling feral cats here. And I would think this is probably similar in other southern areas that freezes are not pervasive.
I've had an SPCA official tell me that feral cats are just like raccoons. Raccoons were not breed for domesticity.
We need to change our mindset to see the damage feral cats do to our environment. (people who altruistically feed them also feed raccoons, skunks and others).
I hope a more reporting is done on this subject and we start to recognize that the TNR program, while seemingly sympathetic to cats is horrible for birds and small lizards who eat bugs.
We should not have such a large population of feral cats.
214
@JK Pollutants buildings and climate change are the three biggest causes. It's not the cats silly.
15
@Alison
Sorry but when I was visiting my daughter in Idaho this past May, her indoor/outdoor cat brought in at least two dead birds a day and some of them were rare species! Cats are plenty problematic.
39
@Alison
I'd like to see your peer-reviewed scientific studies to support that claim. In the meantime, let's not pretend cats both domestic and especially feral are not a significant contributing source of the decline.
17
Excellent editorial, thank you. Here in southern Maine I see the same situation in bird loss. I live out in the sticks, and keep my six acres natural, but still the amount of birds is abnormally low, seems lower each year. Bats are gone completely going on five years, used to come out as the sun went down, seen in the tall pines. Bluejays, which I used to consider pests, are few and far between. Even Robins are few in number compared to the past.
Birds eat insects, and except for ticks, insect populations are lower. I know because I remember in the summer having to keep the windshield wipers going at night to wipe the swath of bugs off the glass to be able to see. That never happens any more.
What we have more of is artificial LED light, and bright light attracts bugs, and kills off too many. The night light also confuses birds flight paths, as they use star light to navigate. God only knows how many have died because of lights at night. The city lights are the worst, but even out here in the country there is way too much light.
Remember fireflies? They used to be so thick it was like a blinking blanket covering the fields, now barely a flicker. This writer makes excellent points, just remember, turn off your lights, let nature have its darkness, and you will be able to see the starts better too.
370
@JD
I have made the same observations. I noticed it last year and this year is even worse.
I, also, live in the woods and have a swamp on back of my property and between me and my neighbors there's over 200 acres...yet there is a significant reduction in birds.
I went out the other morning and the first thing I heard was several crows making a fuss. I suddenly realized I had not heard any for quite a while. When crows are MIA , something is definitely wrong.
I have decided to put up feeders and nesting boxes nearer the woods about 500 feet from my yard telling myself it'll be good exercise as I become one of the doddering elderly...don't know if that's a good plan but I aim to try.
86
@Blanche White Crows fell victim to West Nile Virus. DNA studies have shown that this was brought by an infected visitor from Israel to Flushing, NY, in 1999 and has since spread entirely across the county. The introduction of diseases into the New World has also devastated tree species with Dutch Elm Disease, Elm Yellows, Asian Longhorn Beetle, and the Emerald Ash Borer.
23
@JD
And install Dark Sky compliant light fixtures around the property, which project light downward in a controlled pattern. It's nicer for the neighbors too.
37
We need a strong EPA. Despite its start by a Republican, only the Democrats seem interested in its mission.
If you are worried about the loss of flora and fauna in the world, the voting choice is clear.
446
I already have been letting the Spring weeds in my yard flower and go beyond seed before mowing, and I can see many insect pollinators visiting the diverse blossoms. I have a patch of butterfly bushes that are visited by bees, Tiger Swallowtails and bumblebees. I put on mosquito repellent rather than fogging the entire yard.
But I live in an older 1960s suburb. Today many people live in newer gated communities where it is mandatory to control weeds and keep a golf-course style lawn or pay fines. Lawn service companies are happy to oblige and sterilize your property of insect and other wildlife by dousing with chemicals. This is insane! The covenants in these communities are not eco-friendly and it will be challenging to change this situation. But the stakes are high and getting higher for making deep cultural and legal changes.
485
@PM
The covenants are boiler-plate language for all Planned Unit Developments. Let’s write our real estate sections of our state bar associations and ask that such requirements be removed from the template.
66
@PM
"... I already have been letting the Spring weeds in my yard flower and go beyond seed before mowing, and I can see many insect pollinators visiting the diverse blossoms. …"
I do the exact same thing. The pollinators love my yard.
For the life of me, I don't understand why a lawn that looks like AstroTurf is somehow more beautiful than wild nature.
THE REVENANT by Billy Collins :
Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place
47
@PM
Fogging the yard is a big one. We did it one year and enjoyed the mosquito-free summer, but it clearly affected more than mosquitos. There were hardly any bees at the flowers.
34
Way way too many pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are casually used our modern world.
5
Save the birds and reduce your carbon footprint, have 0 or fewer children.
4
I sincerely hope we can reverse what's happening to birds and all the other life forms that share this planet with us - even as we consume it out from under them.
I am not optimistic - we can't seem to protect ourselves from things like gun violence in this country. What chance do other creatures have in the face of that kind of obliviousness?
5
The follow up study should look at data of how much the country's cat population has increased since 1970.
Might be a clue as to how those birds disappeared.
3
On a recent canoe trip through the Pine Barrens of NJ, there was not a single bird sighted or heard during the entire day. The sky had not a single bird in the air. Perhaps the Pine Barrens has a naturally low bird count, but the experience was nevertheless haunting and chilling. We seldom recognize and appreciate what we have until it's gone. Joni Michelle's 1970 song "Yellow Taxi" came to mind. "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
7
It's interesting to hear a tone that, if Republicans are sent packing, Democrats will step in and implement all the legislation needed to stave disaster. Keep dreaming. We, the citizens of this world, consume far too much and we haven't really shown the will to curb this. I speak for myself as well, of course. It's not enough to eat Impossible Whoppers...we also need to stop demanding so much "improvement." Stop demanding additional features to your phone. Stop demanding "smart" devices and appliances. Stop demanding bigger TV's and fancier running shoes. Stop demanding more absorbent diapers, stop demanding perfect lawns. Stop demanding a culture of desk-shackled work days that require everybody to waste plastic forks and wrappings, frozen slab microwave meals, and styrofoam cups just to make it to the end of the work day and do it again tomorrow.
Republicans are corrupt, but the true change needs to happen in our own habits. We know this, but life is comfortable.
12
I have many birds and turkeys in my backyard. I also have a very large, very dense, somewhat unsightly shrub to provide shelter from the hawks and coyotes. I figure because it's in the back, no one will see it; but I finally caved and had my lawn treated for dandelions because I was worried about what the neighbors would think. I've found that otherwise liberal-minded people can be pretty fascist about curb appeal.
1
@Anonymous
Garden Club of America recently published an article about the "natural lawn, i.e. whatever volunteers in the space. They would love mine as it consists of plantain, violets, bugleweed, a few dandelions and even some avalanche lilies plus other small bulbs that got self seeded. Scattered here and there are some actual blades of grass! Just keep it mowed and the neighbors won't really notice unless they are nosy stuffed shirts!
1
I have always loved nature, especially animals. Little animals like horned lizards and box turtles kept a lonely child company when I was little. I can barely bring myself to read these articles about the decimation of wildlife. It will be a lonely planet if we let them die.
2
@Linda
Our garden is full of chipmunks which have holes to their tunnels everywhere from the lawn to the rockery. Nothing more special than watching them run around in the morning. I put out bird feeders in the winter (can't have them year round because they attract bears which live in the woods here, even in the city.) and have lots of other bird, bee and butterfly attracting plants. The robins and catbirds helped clean the pie cherries off of my tree but there were enough for both of us. I will be interested to see if we get more than robins on the crabapples this year. And now that we have cleaned the oriental bittersweet off of the hollies I'm hoping for cedar waxwings. I had wondered why the mosquitos in my yard suddenly disappeared until we discovered our neighbors had bats in their attic. They closed off the access so I will be getting a bat box for our big oak tree. Lots of toads, a resident woodchuck, and an occasional deer. It is fun living only a mile from the state capitol building but having lots of visiting wildlife!
1
The natural world is changing before us, yet most of us can’t see it. The average person can identify hundreds of brand logos, but can’t tell an oak tree from a maple from a walnut. So called “Agricultural” has carpeted the land with inedible corn and soybeans jacked up on manufactured nitrogen and sprayed down kill everything else.
The GDP is ever growing and the Net Natural World is ever shrinking. The GOP is working hard to open the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area to mining, and the Arctic Refuge to drilling. Both poles are melting and the GOP dreamers are looking at the economic opportunities.
As it stands now, we’re all complicit - it’s practically impossible not to be. If you spend money you’re supporting the machinery of destruction and if you save money your supporting the machinery of destruction.
Take a child out into the natural world. Notice the pollinators, the ants and the mice. Watch the pigeons fly in formation or if you’re able the tundra swans or the warblers heading south. Find a compost pile and watch nature do it’s work. There is beauty all around us but we won’t work to save what we don’t even see.
And if you don’t find beauty in the natural world - don’t fret. As things are going it won’t be there to bother you soon....nor you it.
7
This is the kind of news that doesn't get the attention it rightly deserves since most of the bandwidth these fine days is taken up with the raging dumpster fire that is politics. We pay full attention to the latest histrionics of the National Adolescent while the world is trying to tell us something.
6
I wish that Americans would give up or at least shrink their lawns in favor of more trees, shrubs and plants native to their area(s). This would curb water waste as well.
8
Margaret Renki has brought the dead and dying birds to us almost face to face. The young, climate change activist, Greta Thunberg, came to us as she faced down world leader's telling them, 'You've failed us on climate'. Are there more serious killers than the climate change deniers? Is there a truer face than Greta's showing the pain of this attack on earth with its people lacking in resolve. Wake up, wake up to hear the dirge. See the floods and the fires along with the desperate rescuees. Let us be responders at our legislators doors; within our communities along with neighbhors, families and voters strong. This is our home.
5
I would like to add an eleventh item to Margaret Renkl's otherwise excellent list: Vote in 2020 to remove Republicans from elected office. The birds will thank you.
8
Buy bamboo or recycled toilet paper, paper towels, and tissues. Using no trees is the best option and you can get it mailed to your house!
2
Yes, we have serious political problems.
Still, our problems are more fundamental than politics — they're biological.
Fundaments have primacy, hence need to be weighted more.
eg
Biology is > Politics, in part, because:
"Initial conditions rule in complex systems." Stewart Brand
Frankly, I find Ms. Renkl's wistful, middle-class-safe articles to consistently off because they don't get fundamental.
David Brooks provides a classic example of this.
1970: "The oceans are in danger of dying." Jacques Cousteau
2019: "American culture seemed to be in decent shape and my focus was how individuals can deepen their inner lives." David Brooks on his 2015 decision for writing a book.
One has to explain to Mr. Brooks that if your culture's relationships with the sky and ocean are deadly, your culture is not in decent shape? Unbelievable.
We've generated environs we not coded to interface with.
We're not coded to process complex relationship information (with exponential dynamics) in-&-across Geo Eco Bio Cultural & Tech networks, and across Time.
We're coded for interface with local environs, primarily in a short-term manner.
And here's a devastatingly sad reality.
Fundamental, selected relationship code is:
Fitness is > Truth.
"Organisms that see the truth go extinct when they compete against organisms that don't see any of the truth at all ... and are just tuned to the fitness function."
"Perception is not about seeing truth; it's about having kids."
Donald Hoffman
4
The author forgot to mention that Nixon was brought kicking and screaming to sign the EPA bill.
Nixon, a republican
1
Money has it that corporate power will win out over bird counts. Just ask any republican senator.
4
A minor but significant part of this tragedy is the steady conversion of wild open space to mostly sterile golf courses. If you golf, you are part of the problem (probably worse than eating meat).
5
@Paul Adams
Golf is less and less popular as the costs rise. Many courses are also closing down because there is little available labor to maintain them, especially as the Great Golfer who pretends to be President sends the workers back to their home countries!
@Susan in NH - true, but even abandoned golf courses never become wilder than they once were. In fact, conversion of natural land to human exploitation is always an irreversible process.
There's no point in mincing words. The greatest threat to the health of this planet is the Republican Party of the United States. The occupant of the White House and the entire Republican majority of the senate need to be replaced. At that point we can begin to repair some of the horrible damage they are done to this country's environment. We need to vote to save our country and the planet.
9
I get it. That’s why you send a canary down the coal mine; to find out if it’s safe to go down there. I wonder who’s next?
2
This nightmare is really happening and we really do need to respond and stop the obstruction and denials....now is the time...there is no later.
4
An excellent article that needs to be widely read by all Americans. Hopefully, we can follow her suggestions and restore our bird populations as well as the overall health of our planet. I hope readers will heed as well as distribute this wonderful writing.
2
My only concern is the comment on organic food. Organic agriculture has a lower yield than conventional, and would require far more land to feed a growing population. Furthermore, organic farms do allow for pesticides, albeit fro naturally-occurring sources which are not necessarily any safer than synthetic.
8
@David Coyle When done properly Organic farms can have as high or higher total output but not with a monoculture. There needs to be environmental balance and ecosystem diversity on the farm. It does however require more human planning and knowledge and can't be mechanized as easily as a monoculture farm. I recommend the movie The Biggest Little Farm and the Book Omnivore's Dilemma.
31
David: If we reduce our meat consumption, there will be more farmland available to feed people directly. The inefficiencies of delivering animal protein vs. plant protein is hugely significant, not even measuring the equally significant fossil fuel costs. Please keep in mind that making a change doesn't require an all or nothing approach. A nominal reduction (50% - plus/minus - your mileage WILL likely vary) would open up a LOT of farmland for organically grown food.
As far as your comment,"organic farms do allow for pesticides", that's a somewhat misleading statement, as per the details pasted in below.
We are quite capable of managing our farmlands and providing sustainable markets and profits for organic farmers with existing (and continually improving) technology. All we need to do is make some moderate changes to our diets.
"The National Organic Program (NOP) allows the use of certain natural-based and synthetic substances as pesticides. The NOP’s National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances details about 25 synthetic products that are allowed to be used in organic crop production. These include alcohols, copper sulfate, and hydrogen peroxide. By contrast, there are some 900 synthetic pesticides approved for use in conventional farming."
12
@Sandy Maschan
But what is left to eat if we stop eating meats? can we sustain the population? a good movie on the subject is Soilent Green, where the need to eat meat in humans is taken to another level.
It’s not just birds, folks. Insects have decreased tremendously. (And we all know how hard they are to get rid of!) So have many other animal and plant species on this planet. The great forests in the Amazon - “the lungs of the Earth” - are burning. If we humans don’t understand that we will be the next to go, we are fooling ourselves. And it won’t be pretty. Lack of food and oxygen will mean famine, disease, and war as people fight over the remaining resources. The only way we will survive is to work together and figure out how to control ourselves. We can’t keep expanding our populations and economies the way we have been and think we will survive.
6
Thanks for this plea for compassion.
Re the "Use traps instead of rat poison", may I add -"NOT glue traps". These devices kill by dehydration, after hours of panic and struggle against ensnarement. And they kill indiscriminately.
No small mammal, nor any other life, deserves such a horrendous death.
If killing is required, make it quick.
7
Yes, we are reminded that Rachel Carson alerted us to the dangers of chemicals, specifically DDT on bird life.
Now we are faced with extinction of many life forms, bees for example, in view of the effects of chemicals, pollution, heat, and sheer negligence on the part of humanity.
Humans will not escape this carnage. Today I read about tea bags that are made of plastic releasing micro and nano plastic particles into our bodies. We are exposed to much daily including endocrine disruptors that can effect humans sexuality.
To sum it all up we must act quickly to save ourselves and other life forms here on earth. Who will push us along? All the young Greta's out there who are asking this old generation "How dare you?"
12
Just as the Times has substantially improved its climate change coverage, it should do the same for threatened and endangered species. It has covered scary reports on the status of birds, fish, insects, large African mammals, Amazonian fires; threats to the Endangered Species Act. It should do more, though, on developments involving the Convention on Biological Diversity; ideas like restoration and re-wilding, ecosystem services, corporate environmental stewardship, species-related environmental labeling, sustainable use (and when it does and doesn't make sense), eating bugs (which it did do recently), zoos; the degree to which this issue does and doesn't overlap with climate change; other less known ideas out there. It seems to me that more from Margaret Renkl could fill that role. (Almost said, niche, which would have a double meaning here, but it needs to be more than a niche. It needs to be mainstream.) This column reminds me of the legendary New York Times editor, John Oakes. We could use someone to restore that role. Further, I don't know if journalism works that way, but if people there talk to other people there, we could use internal discussions with Thomas Friedman to better connect his interest in this subject with the rest of his beat, your more open-minded economics writers about what they've been leaving out, as well as your name columnists. The biodiversity crisis is huge. It's going to need a lot of journalistic attention, both in restored and newer ways.
2
I can't believe that most people don't seem to be scared to death. I really never thought there were so many truly ignorant people in our country. Pollution and POISON is killing the bees and the birds. Without them, humans cannot survive.
11
When I moved to Alabama 17 years ago, I was struck by the loud, lovely bird songs each morning in the spring and fall. Now there's barely a whisper. The earth is slowly dying.
8
It's great to say, use no poisons. But traps don't keep cockroaches out of my kitchen, or mice out of my walls, potentially to gnaw on the electrical wires. What to do?
3
@Bejay
If cockroaches come out, just stomp on them. We had lots of them when I lived in South Carolina where they are known as Palmetto bugs and are native!
The destruction of winter habitat and feeding grounds south of the US border is another source of population decrease of migrating songbirds, according to scientists. The problem must be addressed as an international one.
10
Nearly thirty years ago I moved to a home about twenty-five miles outside the city where I worked. Exurbia. My house sits on a small plot of land, a couple of acres, and over the years I have adopted all of the practices mentioned in your article. My home has become a haven for birds and wildlife of all sorts. Meanwhile, development has advanced all around me, overwhelming the surrounding forests and farmlands, turning them into large housing developments with associated expansion of highways, big box shopping centers, schools, and related commercial properties. The loss of forests and fields that once served as habitat for birds and other wildlife is proceeding unabated on an industrial scale. To make matters worse, even native species of trees and other vegetation are succumbing to the effects of ever-increasing temperatures and drought brought on by a changing climate. Not only birds, but reptiles, amphibians, insects and many other species of animals are disappearing at an alarming rate as their habitat is being destroyed. Individual efforts, while commendable, cannot offer sufficient space to replace the habitat that is being lost. But, as hopeless as it may seem, we must start somewhere. Thank you for your efforts in promoting the cause of good stewardship for our mother earth.
11
Has anybody thought about what must have happened on Easter Island? They had an advanced culture. And, then all of it disappeared. Why? It was the success of man over the environment that knew no bounds that led to the destruction for all on Easter Island.
The same "success of man" can happen on a world-wide basis and the momentum may already be impossible to stop. The question now is whether or not the "Greta Thunberg's" of this new and following generations will be enough to overcome GREED before it is too late.
6
Thank you for this informative article and the idea that one must start at home. That includes pressuring one’s representatives to acknowledge the problems and voting out those who fail to see the urgency of seeking remedies for a global crisis. If a 16 year old can gain the attention of the world and speak at the U.N., certainly adults ought to be as bold. Our representatives ought to be afraid of us, rather than the converse. The earth can recover, but only if we stand up for Earth!
7
I am a conservation biologist, and want to note this is an awesome piece. Short, concise and with suggestions for readers that actually make a difference. And thank you for concluding with this little-remembered or known fact: "The Environmental Protection Agency that President Trump seems intent on destroying was created by President Richard Nixon, a Republican." Nixon also signed the Endangered Species Act into law.
28
We are truly facing a disaster of enormous proportions. The decline of our bird population is an indication of the delicate interrelationship between different parts of our environment.
The decline in insects, the use of pesticides, the changes in average temperatures, the extreme weather events and the destruction of habitat are all combining to affect bird species.
But some things can be done immediately. We must get congress to end the use of pesticides, especially those that contain noenicanatoids which are killing bees.
Some will argue that this will reduce crop yields and lead to higher food prices. But the majority of pesticides and herbicides are used to support GMO crops and organic farmers have discovered that they can do just as well without them.
We have to assist bird populations in their migrations. Glass windows can be made to look like solid structures to avoid deadly collisions.
We can also do better with our backyard bird feeders. Everyone can do something. The important thing is to actually do it. Write congress, testify before your city council and improve your local bird habitat.
It's very hard to reclaim habitat, but we can stop further habitat destruction.
Nature is sending us a message. First the decline in insects, then birds, then fish and ocean mammals, and then humans. Saving birds is essential to saving ourselves.
6
...And yet Sydney NSW Australia has been attracting more birds than ever before (there was a NYT article recently about this). CBD footpath rubbish bins need permanent covers not only to deter possums scavenging in them, but also Ibis ("bin chickens").
Some U.S. exchange students have commented that it is one of the first things that they observed about the city: the number of birds and that they are big!
2
@Bruce Stafford It's certainly true that certain species are doing well, even increasing. But the point of the cited research is that overall, there has been a massive decline in bird populations. Almost 30% our our birds lost in the space of a single human lifetime. Most species simply cannot survive the loss of their habitat. As we turn natural spaces into artificial ones for our convenience, we lose the biodiversity that we ultimately rely on for our own survival.
2
The only thing I noticed is that farmers are polluting our nation by not planting cover crops. More insecticide are being used, more herbicides, more fertilizers being sprayed on barren fields. This has increased drastically over the last 40 years. It also has to be noted that severe loss of habitats due to increase population by destroying our Forrest for housing developments plays a huge role in this loss of species on this planet.
7
More people, fewer birds. Simple, eh?
It's not really that simple, but they are related. People could put some effort into doing things that minimize their impact so that 10% more people only equates to 5% fewer birds. But as we continue to grow our population, there is less room for everything else. And as we adapt our practices to support the population, the per capita impact increases. Better insecticides, fewer insects, larger monoculture farms, more traffic and more pavement all take their toll.
People used to let their cats roam. They killed a lot of birds, but there were plenty left. I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying don't blame cats for the overall decline. There are fewer roaming cats than there were.
In my neighborhood, there are more crows, and fewer of everything else.
We have to do many things to help nature get along, but reducing our population is high on the list.
9
@mlbex--Cows are deadly. I wish meat eaters, and milk drinkers, could wrap their tiny minds around that fact. While they chow down on that steak, they never realize that sooner of later there will be nothing to eat, not even plants.
3
I have noticed the same reduction but at the same time I noticed that the last 2 years was extremely wet on the east coast and many of the low lying areas where small rodents had their nests were frequently under water - this cannot be discounted in the food chain - the raptor birds are constantly hungry too, and with fewer rodents it's possible that they too have contributed to the reduction in small birds in the last couple of years. This year we had the opposite - a drought for the last 2 months, and I am noticing a lot more "ground activity" once more. I do think we should try to help feed and water breeding songbirds wherever we can. And plants trees wherever we can. Every little bit helps the planet
2
If everyone got rid of the majority of their lawns (think of all those enormous lawns out there that require weedkiller and mowing) it would help enormously. Lawns are pretty much deserts to birds and insects. What if we thought of lawns as ugly, life-denying eyesores, which is what they actually are. Replace with native wildflowers, shrubs and trees. For example, dandelions are edible, beautiful and great bee forage. We don't use weedkiller and just mow weeds where we need open space. We have bird boxes and lots of shrubs and trees for nests. The result is the glorious sound of birds all around us and a large variety of bees. Our property has become a sanctuary for us and wildlife.
19
The loss of bird populations in dire and depressing, clearly demanding intervention on a worldwide scale. However, I think the individual actions that Ms. Renkl suggests can really make a difference. Weirdly enough, I think our congested urban centers could be a big part of the solution. Over the past couple of decades, New York City has successfully carried out programs to plant a million trees, create tiny pocket parks at intersections and along parkway medians, and build “rain gardens” to relieve our combined storm and sewer systems, mostly planted with hardy shrubs and grasses. Manhattan’s nesting hawks and falcons have made the news, but the lower density outer neighborhoods are probably the areas that have seen the most change.
In my little corner of “brownstone Brooklyn” the yards are too small for lawns so many people have flowers and veg, or at least tall weeds. We also probably have fewer stray cats. I am amazed sometimes as I walk the streets to find trees that are packed with songbirds. The racket can be deafening. In my own garden, I have a diy recirculating bird bath, that attracts even more kinds of birds than the feeders. I keep it going with a heater in the winter, and the birds keep coming. You can’t build a brush pile on a balcony, but you can certainly have a feeder and a birdbath.
14
I live in a large retirement facility where bird feeders are prohibited because they “bring critters.” There has been a bear sighting in the immediate area and that does put elderly walkers at risk. Still, I would think that one or two feeders away from the buildings could be helpful. I’d be happy to read recommendations.
3
@Lynn Scott
Just put them out in the winter when the bears are hibernating!
My own garden in Brooklyn with flowers and tall hedges has a micro-climate all it's own, with bees, birds and even a few monarch butterflies. I had multiple nesting birds in the hedges this year, the bees are happiest with the lavender flowers though spend time with the petunias, the wild thistle, the basil flowering, and anything else growing. I even saw some monarchs the other day to my surprise as I hadn't seen them for years...that said...my little microcosm of wildlife is not this city, nor this country...we should be concerned, we should all be concerned and work to change the damage the current administration has made so much worse.
9
Brush piles and dead trees attract moisquitos, termites, ticks and other insects, these can be bad for humans and our houses. I don't use pesticides but I am not going to create an insect breeding ground on my property.
1
@CEI
Pools of dead water attract mosquitoes, not brush piles. Brush piles do not attract ticks, deer and mice do. You need to learn the facts before spreading misinformation. And for what brush piles do attract, that attraction keeps the attractants out of your house.
Yes so instead of leaving a brush pile you can let some bushes grow wild. We do and the birds love to hide in them.
I’m not a bird watcher. But I haven’t been woken up by birds chirping at all this year. I have to carefully listen to hear a few birds.
3
I must take issue with this statement: “Native birds evolved to eat native plants, so make sure everything you plant is native to your area.” Adaptation to new arrivals in an ecosystem often occurs without evolutionary change and can occur more rapidly than co-evolution requires.
Birds are as likely to use non-native plants as native plants. A study was based on 173 skilled bird watchers responding to 1,000 surveys about bird interactions with plants. “Interact” was defined as eat, nest, perch, glean, etc. 47% of observations of feeding by 139 bird species were of seeds or fruits of non-native plants. 35% percent of all “habitat interactions” were with non-native plants and 26% of all nesting activity was in non-native plants. (Aslan and Rejmanek, “Avian use of introduced plants: Ornithologist records illuminate interspecific associations and research needs,” Ecological Applications, 2010.)
Another academic scientist found 120 studies from 30 countries that quantified the biodiversity of birds, insects, mammals, reptiles, and other plants in urban landscapes. These studies reveal that "science does not support the supposition that native plantings are required for biodiversity…an automatic preference for native trees when planning in urban areas is not a science-based policy.” (Chalker-Scott, “Nonnative, Noninvasive Woody Species Can Enhance Urban Landscape Biodiversity,” Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, 2015)
Marzluff's "Subirdia" reports similar results.
5
@Yellow Dog Your science references are not up-to-date. How about some studies, not from 2010 and 2015, but current. Much recent science suggests planting native is crucial. Give a look at recent studies; consult the Native Plant Trust or studies from The Cuba Center. Please don't give us old, discredited citations.
7
@Maureen Richards Interesting argument. The co-evolution argument is based on an assumption that these immutable relationships between plants and animals are thousands of years old. Why would studies less than 5 years old be “out of date?” Here’s something that was published less than a month ago by a horticultural professional: https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/09/what-butterflies-bees-and-clickbait-have-in-common.html?fbclid=IwAR1FbbP6QT6S0PmeHw9cwNQ5vCALaLorxP02IVdsUJ0g1wFPNIPgs2OEQTI
2
Birds are dying, bees are dying, animals and insects are dying at an alarming rate. The rapid loss of species we are seeing today is estimated by experts to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.
They calculate that between 0.01 and 0.1% of all species will become extinct each year. If the low estimate is true - i.e. that there are around 2 million different species on our planet - that means between 200 and 2,000 extinctions occur every year. If the high estimate is true - that there are 100 million different species co-existing with us on our planet - then between 10,000 and 100,000 species are becoming extinct each year. Biodiversity is life so we are, in fact, witnessing the slow death of our planet
10
@ChristyYes, except the death isn't so slow.
Do you imagine for a moment that trump, who has lived for years inside a glass tower, knows the name of a single species of bird?
Do you think for a moment wheeler, a coal lobbyist, has any concern for 3 billion birds?
Do you believe that pence does not view these deaths as anything but a sign of the much longed-for arrival of the end of days?
21
I think your comment on the end of days is significant. Combine this with “the Earth is dying” and our Swedish student’s lament to the UN and you have something but not a concept our leaders care about.
EARTH is not dying. The end of days is not going to be the end of the world. Both of these will likely be more like Noah’s experience. LIFE may very well end for nearly all species, but Earth will still be here, ready for the next set of inhabitants. It has survived mass extinction before and recovered, just with a different set of players.
I would have liked the human race to be around for a few million years, but our leadership is taking the short term view - the next political rally or, in the very long term, the next election.
20 years? Who cares. Trump knows he won’t be around and even if he is, he won’t remember who he insulted that morning.
7
@Rob Sad, terrifying even, but horribly true that these are the people in charge of our eventual destruction.
2
Conservation easements are an important tool. The Rensselaer Plateau Alliance has been in existence for just a little over a decade and has put literally thousands of acres into easements and sustainable forests Rensselaer Land Trust has been a leader in this area as well. And for us, we have 35 acres, 34 of which we keep as forest, with the upper Kinderhook flowing through it.
Each spring we await the warblers. In the winter we have species from arctic redpolls to red bellied woodpeckers at our feeder.
6
@SP
Thank you. I have wanted to learn more about conservation easements but found information hard to get. I will look up The Rensselaer Plateau Alliance.
5
I suggest looking into local land trust organizations too. RPA and Rensselaer Land Trust are local to Rensselaer County in New York.
1
People who are criticizing this excellent article for not being militant enough must not have read to the last paragraph: "None of this happen without a wholesale shift in our politics..." The author includes a sharp criticism of the Republican Party, as well as a reminder that it was Richard Nixon who created the EPA.
In the meantime, we should follow her suggestions to creating wildlife-friendly yards, starting with not using pesticides. Check with your local Master Gardeners or University Cooperative Extension for advice. And of course, vote for candidates who support environmental science.
17
"The Republican Party today may be little more than a political wing of the fossil-fuel industry, but it needn’t be that way."
I would argue that Trump's cabinet appointees are the real perpetrators of continuing and even escalating damage to our planet. Trump probably does not care, but he appoints the lackeys of the fossil fuel industry to lead the federal agencies that could restore sanity to our policies and credence to the value of the regulations they are rolling back.
5
I used to go for regular walks in my neighborhood. I first noticed in late summer two or three years ago that the robins and blackbirds would disappear in late July and August. I just assumed they were seeking refuge in more wooded areas due to the late summer heat. I commented about it to several of my neighbors at the time and they agreed once they stopped to think about it. I can remember seeing bees everywhere as a child and now you rarely ever see any. It's all very depressing.
10
I saw a monarch in the Boundary Waters last week. I just stared at it, much the way Ms. Renkl did in Tennessee. As a kid in upstate NY in the '50s, I saw them everywhere every summer.
We have torn the biological web upon which we all depend. I have no skin in this game--no family except my wife, both of us in our seventies---no children, no grandchildren. Still I care, but at the same time, reality causes me to change the pronoun I use to the second person. YOU need fewer people on this planet, period. Either YOU do it humanely by birth control or nature will do it for YOU.
18
iT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, PEOPLE!
The widespread use of the poisonous weedkiller Roundup, while killing annoying weeds, murders everything it touches. This mayhem of annoying weeds kills up the food chain: insects and birds--wait for it--also humans. It is the villain in increasing cancer rates among farmworkers. Looks @ the evidence under your very noses, folks. The US ;has yet to follow the lead of wiser Europeans [as in other cases] amd ban Roundup and the horse it rode in on. Wait a minute: we can save the songs of birds and the lives of our very selves. Can I prove my claim?
In his widely heralded book, "Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life," David R. Montgomery, a MacArthur Fellow & Professor of geomorphology at the U of Washington, proves that non-tillage, crop rotation, continual crop cover, and on some farms-cattle rotation, can restore our once naturally-fertile soils. This restoration makes these now-exhausted from artificial fertilizers soil able to become vast carbon sinks.
Montgomery's inescapable conclusions convince even the casual reader that we can grow more nourishing food, end dependence on costly chemical soil additions, and become potent providers in the existential fight to cure climate chaos.
Oh yeah, we can also make family farming affordable again.
Read this book, share it widely, and become a freedom fighter to save our only home, Planet Earth.
20
Individual actions like planting wildflowers may make people feel a little better, and feeling like we have agency is important. But it is not going to change the trends. If that is all people are willing to do, we are in trouble. It is disappointing that this article did not call for action that might really make a difference, perhaps because that takes real commitment and sacrifice.
The only thing that can counter the power of money that is behind republican destructiveness and democratic fecklessness is mass movements in the streets and making life miserable for politicians who won't do the right things. Otherwise the money behind them will continue to win out and your backyard flowers will remain unvisited...and much worse.
How many of the comfortable middle class readers of this article (or the author herself?) that are wringing their hands are willing to really do what it takes to make change in the face of power that will not change without being forced to? How many are willing to understand that our dysfunctional democracy and economic institutions and system are what is causing the catastrophes around us? As a wise person once said, expecting different outcomes from doing the same things that got us into the mess in the first place is the definition of insanity.
9
@Doug
I think a great many of us would be willing -- eager -- to reform the habits, systems and institutions that have created this disaster, even at considerable personal sacrifice, if only we knew 1) what to do and 2) that our individual efforts were part of a far-ranging and systematic plan to mitigate the destruction of our habitat. Absent those two criteria, the entire mess muddles along as before, and we muddle with it, attempting to quash the rising anxiety and blinking away the tears
4
@Doug Ms. Renkl does call for wider action in the article. Read it again.
Unfortunately, this message is preaching to the choir. Most of our fine citizens don't care about climate change unless it undisputably impacts them
6
@anonymouse. The time of “impact” has arrived, and we are woefully behind in addressing the situation. I believe the movement for change won’t happen so much from collective enlightenment, but from fear induced by real catastrophe-By the time enough of us experience that fear, it may be too late......
4
It is the older population that mourn the loss of the trees and birds and forest creatures. Even the ants that built their homes in the cracks of sidewalks no longer exist. I haven't seen a daddy long leg in forever. But it is now that I notice the enormous loss that initially was slow and barely detectable and is now pictured only in children's books.
15
Birds and butterflies. Haven't seen studies on butterflies, grasshoppers, etc., but I would be surprised if there were not similar results. Greta T. is right. This is an emergency, and we must do everything possible to return to sustainability. Issue number 1, not that the others are not important. We need social justice and relative equality to fight the environmental battle effectively.
11
@Bob
I don't know of any published study or hard data, but I can provide some anecdotal support for possible butterfly population loss. As a young man, I could visit seaside groves in California during the monarchs' annual migration and the trees would be teeming with countless thick clusters of butterflies. These days, when I go to Pismo, is isn't unusual to find just a handful of moderate-sized clusters. They're still lovely, but they are a shadow of what one used to see every season.
8
This is far more disturbing than a speech by anybody at the UN. My "neighbors" are mostly birds. I feed them all year. The last few years they seem to be trending down. The population of the US was ~200 million in 1970. It's over 330 million now ( so much for the oft repeated "falling birth/population rate!" cries from the left). Does any one doubt that as more and more of the planet is used to grow, house, feed, transport etc humans, there will be less of those resources for other species? If we don't make space for the millions of disappearing species by reducing our numbers, no matter how non PC it is to say it, we will be left on a planet with nothing but: people, rats, flies and a few species we grow to eat. Not only do we not have the moral right to get rid of these other creatures, who wants to live in this brave new world?
18
@Al
I never heard any "falling birth/population rate!" cries from the left. Get the potatoes outta yer ears – it's the right that wants to make money at the expense of the environment.
@Kurt Remarque
You need to read the nyts comment sections more often. Try taking off your PC blinders. It's a constant refrain, our birth rate and population are falling so therefore we need lot more immigrants to keep our Ponzi scheme of an economy going. I added the Ponzi scheme comment as that's what we have for an economy. It's like the other lefty myth-that immigrants pay more in taxes than they use. Try the math. 2 immigrants 50,000 in income (I'm being generous) and 3 kids who aren't immigrants. They get all the benefits but the left doesn't count their tax payer benefits because they're citizens. Typical cherry picking of numbers.
Multiple birds fed at my mother's hairdressers all day long; but when I was there last week, I saw no birds. My mother says she hasn't seen a single bird there over the last month. That is chilling.
12
As a serious bird lover, this latest report is much on my mind. We use to have fifty to seventy house finches at our feeders year round and now, this last year, under ten. (My vegetarian Newfoundland keeps cats at bay.) It is heart breaking. I was in Belize and noticed the startling absence of birds and all insects, except mosquitoes. Belize sprays strong pesticides once a month over towns. When was the last time you saw a smashed insect on your wind sheild?
Yes, like climate action, do everything you can: never use pesticides for anything; buy solar panels or work to have your apartment building, condo or place of business to go solar, buy an electric car or bike and use that for all local trips; plant native species, reduce plastic; go vegetarian; do everything you can as if your life depended on it, because maybe you get to keep your life, but there are so many other lives in need of saving.
17
"Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble.”
The problem is that a large majority of Tennessee citizens, just like those in neighboring Kentucky and West Virginia, wouldn't understand such a "complicated" statement as the one above.
And if they did, they would tell you it's a "socialist" idea from the elite up north.
I've spent much time in "them there hills" in those states and in western NC over the past 50 years, and I've to come to know just how wedded they are to coal mining, GOD and false patriotism --and how much they hate the educated, science and the federal gov'ment.
Birds are things to shoot at with their guns -- and when the birds are all gone, there will be enough squirrels around to shoot them instead.
Our country, the largest economy in the world and largest emitter of carbon, is ruled by coal and oil money from the least populous states: Kentucky / McConnell and Oklahoma / Koch Brothers. It's not only undemocratic and sinister, it is massively destructive for all forms for life, including human life.
As beautifully written as your opinion piece is, one could wager that it will have zero influence on the people in deep Red States who adhere steadfast to their love of God, guns, oil and coal. Sadly, those who need to change their thinking won't even venture read it.
38
@GM
Last time I checked, most of that evil oil, coal and gas (and the electricity they produce) is used by the high population states many of whom are blue. You are free to stop using them anytime you want. It is popular to blame big oil and gas for all our problems, but we are responsible for how we live, as inconvenient as it is to acknowledge this. The US adds 2.5-3.5 million people per year. That is more than the populations of 15 states. How we live and how ,any of us live here are the real culprits of our environmental problems. We need to stop blaming others.
9
@Al Sorry Al: Electric car, solar panels, zero plastic use, no meat, biking. I will continue to blame the culprits and people with attitudes like yours who make it impossible for us to transform our economy, farming, infrastructure, and lifestyles to support a more sustainable future for my kids and yours. If not, those majestic furs in the Lochsa wilderness will choke and die and so will the beautiful wildlife in and around the winding Snake River.
8
@GM the United States is not the largest carbon producer a simple Google search brings up the data to prove this. Also people would only say it's a socialist idea from the elites if the solution to climate change is to give up your money to the federal government which in no way helps the environment.
1
The canary in the coal mine is only for those who are paying attention. I think Darwin best described the others.
10
Audubon.org has a tab at the top of their home page “ Grow Native Plants” which will help select native plants for your location. Most nurseries (except HD) carry native plants. They can make a big difference.
9
@Laura Gorman
You are right but it is very difficult to get native plants sometimes. Tried getting some milk "weed" lately for monarchs? It's surprisingly hard. No problem getting some decorative imported plant that the local pollinators don't use. Example, tulips. I like how they look but have stopped planting them once I learned they aren't used by bees. We should outlaw any non native plants and animals being imported. It would have prevented the python and lion fish catastrophes we have in the south and the Caribbean.
2
My grandmother and mother told me stories about their victory gardens, and ration stamps, and a unity of purpose that seem impossible in our current climate.
It will not help, but I have decided to be the last of my line, to eat very little meat, to use fewer chemicals, drive less, buy fewer but better things that will last, and to think about my consumption habits and make changes where I can. The lawn is chemical-free these past 5 years, and recently seeded with clover.
And yes, I have planted my very own tiny victory garden. It supplies some vegetables over the summer and fall. It may not be enough to help future generations to thrive, but it is what I can do in my small way.
15
If you are putting water out for birds, you must keep the bowls scrupulously clean. If you cannot maintain cleanliness, it’s better better to put out nothing. A few years ago there was a disease killing lots of birds in my county, and the request went out for residents to stop all feeding and watering for a month or more.
Anticoagulant rodent poison is a huge killer of out local bobcats, coyotes and foxes, so it must affect the raptors as well.
I think that residential pesticide use must play a big part in killing birds. There are too few restrictions on its use, and too many people use the chemicals stupidly. My own brother told me he once sprayed a large tree with a pesticide (Sevin, I think), and birds fell out the tree.
Finally, I urge people not to put up glass deck railings. They are certain death for birds. Your supposed right to an unobstructed view does not outweigh the right of of wild birds to be safe.
13
Just one more example of how we are destroying the planet. The report will fall on deaf ears and closed minds. Americans will only wake up when it is too late to remedy this problem, as with most of today's problems.
3
Every time I hear or read someone say, "but what can I do to help?" I will recite by heart the 10 easy suggestions Ms. Renkl outlined.
These are pretty much common sense steps to a lot of us who have been practicing these for much of our lives, but I think it's important for folks to see these steps from the viewpoint of a bird.
Fresh water is so often taken for granted but it is KEY for birds to remain hydrated. But leaving standing water can and will bring other unwelcome results like mosquitoes and their penchant for West Nile.
In my area, we can get FREE traps for rats from our local precedent/alderman's office. Checking with other local government offices could have similar results.
I can't stress recycle, recycle, recycle plastic enough. Also, every morning I pick up plastic items which have been tossed in our alley during the night. We only live a few blocks from the lake so with a decent wind, those items could end up there.
I think the sentence that sums up everything is "wildlife needs ARE human needs."
My mother always said every person has at least one good and redeeming quality about them. I always thought she was spot on with that assessment because look at Richard Nixon - he created the EPA.
However, still looking for that "one good and redeeming quality" in Trump. Maybe that quality will be his defeat or removal from office.
18
Thank you Margaret Renkl. You are a voice of compassion and sanity.
17
This article would be improved by omitting the perfunctory swipe at Trump in the final paragraph. I don’t like Trump, but people who do like Trump also like the planet. And birds. You don’t further their cause by sniping. More likely you damage it, by alienating the very people you need to make changes. You could have framed what the EPA needs to do in a less antagonistic way, by making proactive suggestions. The planet is everyone’s and everyone’s help needs to be enlisted. When you stoop to accuse, you fail us all. And you fail the birds.
1
@Jeffrey Churchill Trump, and GOP, were contextualized within a Nixon framework—adversary and founder of EPA, both Republicans. If an individual, or group, ignores or denies the impact of their actions it’s not only appropriate but necessary to articulate the complicity. Alienating climate deniers and fossil fuel advocates is not an attack, but rather a side symptom of acknowledging reality.
9
@Jeffrey Churchill People who like Trump could not care less about the planet, or birds. They cheer on his deregulation - including allowing unfettered pollution in waterways, rolling back environmental rules designed to protect our air, allowing drilling in previously protected areas, etc. What they prize are corporate profits (if they are Republican politicians) and "owning the libs" (who they know are upset by deregulation), if they are the Republican base.
1
If the people who like Trump, as you say, also like their environment, then why do they like Trump? He and his appointees are systematically gutting all our protections.
The Interior Department is a disaster. The EPA has no staff left. Trump threatens even NOAA and its scientists.
A conundrum.
I just don't see it.
Getting rid of Republicans is now a matter of human survival. So much for the lie of "good people on both sides of the issue."
If you are willing to fight for your own survival or the survival of your children, you will need to neutralize the Republicans and the harm they keep doing. Are you up to it, or will you just fade away?
17
Is there any way to protect the birds from getting whacked by all those green energy windmills? It’s a veritable avian graveyard on the ground them.
Speaking of environmental disasters, who is going to clean them up when the wind mills reach the end of their useful life spans and the operators abandon them?
1
Not true. A lot of studying and learning has been done about the effect of wind mills on birds. Now, when planned, they are purposely kept out of migration paths. You should check out the wind turbines on Block Island RI.
We are humans who have gotten used to having lights that turn on at the flick of a switch, heated and cooled homes, refrigerators that plug in and keep our food cold. We aren’t goingback to a time when we didn’t have those things. Sure, windmills and solar panels take energy to produce, but not to run, and but nothing like the carbon and mercury dioxide poison emitted every second from a coal or gas or diesel plant.
Let’s focus on what’s really killing the birds en masse: climate change( less food) pesticides, air pollution .
8
My three acres used to be part of a standard 15 acre plot built in a Wichita suburb called Andover. When we bought the house/yard 20 years ago, the previous owner sold-off the 12 acres to a developer. It went from fields/grassland to a gated community, now with about 40 houses. All very similar in style, French Country meets Vegas. Very sterile, with postage stamp yards that are maintained like golf courses, lots of spraying and fogging. I’ve noticed a great decrease of animal and insect life in my Yard, Sadly. I provide sanctuary and food/water, for most takers. But, I’m sure I’m rare in this neighborhood, being the cranky old lady and a known Democrat.
Please keep spreading the word, Margaret. SHOUT IT.
38
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Some of my best friends are cranky old ladies who happen to be Democrats.
Bravo on providing a beautiful, necessary and useful sanctuary which provides food and water.
My biggest thorn in my paw are the plethora of squirrels which always problematic with being food hoarders. It's always a fight to the finish with the bird bells and suet blocks.
5
@Phyliss Dalmatian
I’ve been driving to Long Island for 50 years,
visiting my brother.
About 4 years ago I noticed my windshield had barely one splattered bug.
Years ago my windshield was totally covered in bugs.
4
@New World My son and I drove from Southern California to Austin, Texas in August to move him into an apartment before starting his Ph.D. program at UT. We drove his car, and a U-Haul with his "stuff" in it. Compared to similar trips back in the day (my family drove to Austin to visit relatives in the 60's), there were very few bugs on the windshield/front of the cars.
1
Great article....I will try to do a better job of helping here.
7
How could we not discuss the need to limit and reverse human population growth if the rest of the earth's flora and fauna are to survive? Four billion or more additional people have been added in my short lifetime. Cherish one or two (max) children and stop subsidizing human population growth.
13
Thanks Margaret for an excellent article.
3
First the smallest, than us. Take my word for it the universe won't miss any of us from the smallest to the most grand, nor the poorest or wealthiest human. We will simply be just another failed species on a dead planet at the outer edge of one of thousands of spiral galaxies. We don’t care about this gift of life and thought. Neither does any of the many deities to whom we pray. My advice; enjoy yourself as it’s later than you think.
10
The most effective step to protect birds and the environment is to VOTE, and organize others to vote, for pro-environment candidates and policies. Brush piles (great locations for huge rats' nests) and berries aren't going to make any appreciable difference.
5
In my childhood,50 years ago, the mouth of the Essex River, Massachusetts, Cranes Beach on one side, Coffin Beach on the other, thousands of migratory birds, gathered in earl fall, clouds of birds, today, a bare handful.50 years ago, at 4:30 am birds would wake you, if you left your windows open, today, silence. People can sleep late now, because the birds are now gone. Maybe gone forever.
16
I said this very thing a couple of weeks back, when I first read about the birds dying. As a matter of fact, I even used the same metaphor, posting on Facebook along with a link to the article, ‘remember the canary in the coal mine?’
I probably posted it under my author name, Eugenie D West.
Your column is good, but not original. Then again, with something this alarming, it may be wise to have the message delivered several times, so people (might) finally believe it. But perhaps we are preaching to the choir, as they say, since likely those who read the NYT are already concerned about climate change and its impact.
1
although I know it is de rigueur for Times columnists to blame everything on climate change, climate change is not the problem for bird loss. As the paper itself says, it is habitat loss as we clear land for housing or whatever. It is also all the huge buildings that birds fly into. And let's not forget wind turbines and solar panels. Those aren't bird friendly either. And house cats.
And none of them have anything to do with CC. So let's drop the climate change gambit and focus on real doable things. We feed and water a number of different bird species here in CT, make sure there's water, bird seed and keep the house cats indoors. Fortunately, much of CT is overgrown with trees so I don't think habitat loss is a huge problem here.
And let's also recognize that for migratory birds that summer in the US and then take off for central or south america for the winter (here) that the problem may not be all in the US.
2
@Ralphie
Please consider that great droughts, wild fires, epic flooding events, prolonged heat spells, disrupted synchronicity in phenology, etc. can have profound effects on many species, including the keystone species in ecosystems in which many bird species exist. All of the factors are influenced by climate change. Habitat loss and climate change are integrally connected in the great bird decline. And both driven by the combustion of fossil.
4
Reducing single plastics use is something we are working on in our home; however, plastic packaging is so ubiquitous that it is difficult. In addition to reusable grocery bags and carrying our own refillable water bottles, we need to advocate for corporations to quit sealing everything in plastic packaging. Stopping it at the source by demanding that corporations switch to compostable packaging will have a much greater impact on reducing single use plastics in the long run.
19
In the early 2000s West Nile Virus swept across the United States from east to west. WNV is carried by mosquitoes that bite humans, causing a gradation of human disease up to and including a lethal form of encephalitis. But the mosquitoes also bite birds, in which the virus can replicate. Some birds die from WNV. Others remain well-enough to fly far. When they are bitten by mosquitoes, WNV to transmitted to them... from birds to insects to people to mosquitoes and so forth and so on. Thus did WNV spread to new territories.
The bird die-off, which was pretty substantial even if transitory, was therefore a sentinel for the spread of a human pathogenic virus.
Monitoring the health and well-being of pets, livestock, and wildlife is important for protecting _human_ health and well-being.
"Healthy ecosystems, healthy people."
Our current administration fails to comprehend this fairly simple idea.
21
@A. Reader Thanks for pointing out the significance of WNV as a factor in declining bird populations. I was unaware. As devoted as we all should be to addressing the "here, now" climate crisis, my Googling suggests it's intellectually dishonest to write a piece on recent bird population decline and not mention WNV.
2
This would all have a hint of credibility if anyone was able to demonstrate a causal link between th bird deaths and non-natural phenomena.
That hasn;t happened yet.
In fact, it's not even clear that these numbers - large as they are - are not typical of bird populations throughout history - because we only recently started counting, reliably.
And we don't how widespread disease, inbreeding, or over-population, effects the birds because we haven't studied these topics in detail.
Certainly, doing bird friendly stuff is on my list; it always has been.
But linking this to climate alarmism and agriculture is way beyond believable, just yet.
3
@Objectivist. I believe many who have lived in the same area for 50 years and spent a good amount of time outdoors would disagree with you.
18
Climate change isn’t the only issue cited. Habitat loss is a huge factor, and it’s very difficult to deny that habitat for all living creatures besides humans has dwindled, because of humans. There was a study a few years ago that documented the large numbers of trees cut down around the planet. Birds need trees for home and food. Sometimes cause and effect is not that mysterious.
5
You are hardly objective. If you were given the enormity if scientific evidence on the rapidly increasing perils of climate change you would never have used the term alarmist to describe those fighting to save the planet for human habitation.
8
Lawns kill.
Not directly, but indirectly--by their very existence as biological barren wastelands and deserts. If only Amercicans and those in other countries would change their thinking abbout these verdent-appearing but sterile spaces. Lawns used to be more "diverse" . Until Mid-Century, grass seed was sold with clover seed--natural nitrogen-producing plants that reduced the need for fertilizers. They also attract bees. Expansive stretches of grass prevent other forms of life from even existing,
Public awareness or even legislation may be required to save anything that's left.
22
We are not going to solve the problem with birds one backyard at a time. Nor are we going to stop climate change one Prius at a time. Modern agriculture is dependent on spraying tons of chemicals over the fields while backyard use is a paltry fraction.
I am sitting on my back porch of my house located one kilometer from paved road. I should be hearing a morning chorus, but there is one chickadee at the feeder and a crow in the distance. I drove 90 min in the dark two nights ago and had narry a bug splat. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is upon us. It will take major changes opposite to the what the Trump administration is doing in order to reverse these changes.
The longer that the Trump administration is in control of national policy, the greater the damage becomes. Time is wasting.
49
@Profbam According to the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, “Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops, and they spend more per acre, on average, to maintain their lawns than farmers spend per agricultural acre.”
18
@the quiet one
Wow. Amazing information, but in a sense, hopeful. On strategy might be to encourage Home Depot, Lowes, and garden centers to unite to start turning the tide toward sustainable home gardens and yards.
20
@the quiet one
In just one state, Illinois, in 2019, six million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans were sprayed with dicamba herbicides that volatilized and drifted for miles, injuring valuable broad leaf species in wild habitats, in public parks and spaces within central Illinois cities, and in peoples' home landscapes. Please tell me how anything comparable to this unregulated toxic trespass, on this vast of a scale, is happening with home landscape applications.
25
So many billions of ways to register the destruction of the planet from our billion ways of consuming it.
Democratic politicians have championed climate change. But in many respects, particularly among the farm state legislators, they have been in denial of the great losses of grass land habitat and the ecological costs from pesticides used in mono-crop, 'eco-modern', industrial production of field corn and soybeans. Industrial crop production is THE special interest that Democrats (and of course Republicans) will not touch. Which has made companies like Bayer just as untouched and the EPA just as corrupted as Trump.
Let's call some names while we are diagnosing the loss of birds.
10
Yes, feral and household cats are the largest factor in bird mortality in the US - ahead of everything else, even when combined - clear windows, cars, power lines, chemicals, wind farms, etc
See Table 1 of Loss et al "Direct mortality of birds from anthropogenic causes" Ann Rev Ecol Evol Systematics 46:99-120 (2015)
11
I agree with most of the points in the article except "Keep house cats indoors. Even well-fed cats kill birds" is zoological nonsense. Birds and cats must and will find a way to survive together, we cannot "solve" this for them (BTW, it's the humans' mess, not theirs). In addition, cat owners could rightfully demand the contrary: let our cats run free and cage the birds instead. Cats and birds were all meant to be and run free so let them do so. Oh, funny, that goes for humans too...
1
@Aaron
If you want to go with that logic, then let's let the dogs and coyotes eat the cats too.
3
@Aaron, actually, no, our neighborhoods were never “meant” to be overrun with the nonnative predator that is the domestic cat.
2
Yes, eliminate most pesticides and herbicides but when you are clearing out non-natives to plant natives, particularly bamboo, the TACTICAL use of glyphosate is probably the best way to clear the plants you don’t want without disrupting pollinators.
Bird feeders and bird baths should be part of any home garden.
Oh, and vote out every single politician that is against sustainable development and is pro fossil fuels. Every single one.
17
Invasive plants that do not support songbird food and young, predator-accessible shrub and forests are huge drivers of this decline. And guess who is behind the destruction of intact forests and the creation of invasive species-rich habitat? The US Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA, and Audubon and their “Great Thicket National Wildlife Refuge” program. They are creating tens of thousands of acres of disturbed, invasives-filled habitats in an attempt to stand in the way of nature to support a narrow suite of birds and rabbits that were outcomes of the wholesale destruction of forests in the 1800s. And as an added bonus, they are fueling the log mills with almost free trees. All of this is senseless and expensive, and destroys the power of carbon sequestration that is found in older forests. You think that bad science is owned by climate deniers? It is a disease in the wildlife management profession and in Audubon and its followers.
4
Many city ordnances make it difficult to grow natural yards, with brush piles, some weeds and native plants. It's worth fighting the city, but realize the rules are designed to make you keep a lawn as if we lived on an english manor.
Advertise with a yard sign that you don't put pesticide on your lawn so others can realize it is "a thing."
16
@PLombard. I’ve been thinking about a “bee friendly yard” sign. My grass is longer with flowering weeds. Bees love it. No complaints that I know of. I think people might be concerned about ticks. I am, too. But it hasn’t been an issue.
6
It’s telling that you didn’t talk about the people’s power to work together to direct the work of their representatives. America needs a democracy with representatives that work for the people. We need a people learning continuously to claim their power by working together instead against each other. It is still true that a house divided against its self doesn’t stand much of a chance in surviving.
7
I have been birding for thirty years. This fall migration has been the most meager I have ever experienced. The other day I visited the Great Swamp and National Wildlife Refuge in New Jersey. I stepped out of my car and heard nothing. No calls, no twittering, no familiar sounds of avian life. The silence was startling, almost horrifying.
32
Folks need to realize that most people are not going to become vegans. The emphasis should be on a healthy diet, which can include meat, just high quality lean meats in small portions, on occasion. That alone would make a tremendous difference.
11
Locally, one of my town councilmen, in a meeting discussing a planned community, was concerned that the underlying reason for the design was that it was "green." "I am not an environmentalist" he stated. "I don't believe in that. That is not my philosophy."
Getting the insecticide out of our lawns reduces a large portion of toxicity. Getting our own leadership to recognize that breathing and drinking water are not philosophical pursuits will eliminate a lot more.
We have reached the counterintuitive stage by which anything which might improve our environment is considered bad, a liberal philosophy to be rejected out of hand.
That is going to kill a more than just songbirds
58
Good piece. One other thing that should be mentioned, and was mentioned by a commenter on the original article here, is that the growth in North America's human and domestic animal populations has reduced bird habitat. The human population of North America was about 220 million in 1970; today it's about 370 million. The number of domestic animals -- livestock and pets -- has also increased. In these circumstances some drop in the bird population was inevitable. In addition to the steps the author lists, we ought to think seriously about the ideology of endless growth. Sustainable prosperity is a better alternative, if we can figure out how to achieve it.
24
Nourish the mind with truth. That is a powerful beginning. Your article is refreshing and inspirational. I live adjacent to one of the South's great parks, Stone Mountain. One of the thrills for visitors is sighting wild animals and songbirds. A golf course nearby has chemical runoff seeping into the lake making bream, crappie, bass and catfish dangerous as food.
I wake up to the screeching of the red-tail hawk family living high in a tree. Watching their devotion to each other is a reminder to do my part to assure their survival.
22
This tears my heart out.
We have such a beautiful world, and it's dying before our eyes.
34
@Xfarmer
"It's dying before our eyes" is passive, piteous, and inaccurate.
"We are killing it" is active, outrageous, and accurate.
3
Thank you for the simple “to-do” list. The recent news on birds, and before that all insects, and before that, colony collapse disorder (bees), together with all the climate news, have left me, and I suspect quite a few others, with a feeling of futility: the problems are so many, so vast and to some, nearly irreversible, what difference can I make, as one apex consumer/polluter among billions? Well, aside from feeling virtuous, almost none. That’s the truth. Unless I become or help to create a world leader who can actually move humanity in the right direction and away from self-induced calamity. But that to-do list is a step in the right direction. Instead of the endless cycle of woe is us, we’re doomed and the Republicans are to blame, specific calls to nonviolent action, sufficiently distributed and followed to generate critical mass, might actually make a difference. At least slow our march toward oblivion and give us time to figure something out.
25
@MWR, there actually IS something that *only* the "little individual" can do, and that is buy time until the powerful but slow governments and industry and science can get themselves into action. If enough individuals take relatively small actions -- like skipping a hamburger a few times a month and taking a bus to work once a week -- we will keep enough carbon out of the atmosphere to preserve the possibility of non-catastrophic change. It will take 500 million people taking simple actions and time is short. 2020 or Bust is a nonprofit created to get the word out and align people in action. There is an app that shows how much carbon you have kept from the air. and eventually, the world total. I am not an expert and have written this off the top of my head. See more info at https://www.2020orbust.org/ -- I hope the Times lets me post this!
1
The loss of birds in Southern Minnesota concerns and saddens. One of the highlights of my year has been the Orioles that migrate northward in mid May. I put out orange halves for them and one or two pairs will linger for a few days on their way to forest nesting grounds further north. I'm not sure why, but I never see them in the fall when they fly south. The Orioles did not appear this year.
Our local climate is changing. This year we broke our precipitation record on about September 21. The new record probably will eclipse the old by 25%.
Our winters are noticeably warmer. The "cold snaps", consecutive winter days with a high temperature of zero or below, are shorter. We have more freezing rain and heavy wet snow.
20
It is already too late to significantly alter the consequences of our collective behavior towards the earth. The really convincing Die Out will be when humans starve by the millions, which will set in motion not progress, but fearful survivalist mentality en masse. And here we have over 300 million guns in the USA. 2050 may open with little to celebrate on that New Years Day. I am lucky--I won't be here to witness the slowly, then suddenly emerging cataclysm. We've made such astounding progress in some directions, but in the directions of peace, the general welfare and the environment, we are still essentially adolescents: selfish, short-sighted, greedy and in denial about responsibility and the inevitability of our collective end. If there were another species on the earth, similar in stature and impact on the environment, we would be alarmed if there came to be 7.5 Billion of them. And we wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't be sustained and started dying off. We might even be relieved. I just hope that among the survivors of the culling of the human race, that there will be enough rational, reasonable and capable people left for them to carve out a decent existence in the world that is left. The earth will be fine just a few thousand years or so after the humans are brought back to a reasonable number, perhaps 100 million world wide. It's just the natural way of things. What, we thought that humans were the biggest thing going on the earth? No, only for a time.
34
@Gary Pippenger - AMEN.
2
"Birds are indicator species" Far from it. Insects and plants. Both of those form the foundation for the food chain for land based life. That war has been waged on both for decades.
11
@Mark They are indicators of ecosystem health, i.e., the diversity and vigor of plants, insects, etc.
3
Excellent article and thanks for the to do list.
20
While we should adhere to the prescribed list of ecological remedies, there is little hope of a healthy planet when there are 3X too many humans on it.
34
@James Siegel Exactly. And a world full of people denying women the right to do what they need to with THEIR bodies. Become and advocate for our rights, James. Thank you.
26
Listen to the advice of ted turner,"save everything." Everything depends on everything. The biggest decline in bird population is in the suburbs, the same human sub group that brought us the trump era. We do our own thing for our fine feathered friends but honestly it would take more courage to place a sign on our lawn that supports the opposition candidate to Mitch McConnell.
35
"The resulting outcry led to a ban on DDT, which in turn was instrumental in allowing raptors like bald eagles and peregrine falcons, which exist at the top of their own food chains, to recover."
The hope that the gubbmint will do something even with an "outcry" is a false hope. There was an outcry over the Vietnam War in 1968 and the public turned against the War, yet it continued until the US was forcibly pushed out in 1975. So it has gone with other "outcries."
6
It's not just the birds. They're just the tip of a very large iceberg. Look around as this writer has done. Do you see it? The impact is everywhere. Insects are in decline. Ocean life is withering. Our atmosphere and ground are acting in disturbed fashion. It grows increasingly hard to ignore the fact that things are in flux.
The Earth is a vast terrarium; a closed loop system the machinery of which continually strives for the one thing Mother Nature demands of it; balance.
The human species, as it currently comports itself, continues to dump huge amounts of energy into that system (in the form of CO2, etc.) and that energy must go somewhere. It ripples through the machinery, shuddering it into new energetic states following Mother Natures dictates.
By our actions we are setting this Terrarium onto a path towards a new balance. A new normal. And I suspect, if we survive the transition, that we won't be liking it much. Not in our current vast numbers. The new normal will not be able to sustain us in those numbers.
If we don't wake up and start acting as wisely as we are intelligent then we'll have no one to blame for the resulting impact but ourselves.
John~
American Net'Zen
47
More practical individual choices: require any lawn service to keep the deck at least 4” high. Scalping the lawn on an arbitrary weekly basis kills bugs and drives away nesting birds. Stop it. (Those 70 hp lawn tractors are an environmental terror.). Next, stop mowing so frequently. It’s a male territorial thing I know but you really don’t have to do it so often by end of July. Stop all fertilizer and herbicide and pesticide blanket application. You don’t need it.
When my neighbors ask “why are all the birds in your yard” I might answer “because they are not in yours.” They still don’t get it.
71
My sentiments exactly as echoed in my commentary.
1
Thank you for this great to-do list, especially the brush pile idea. But I am disappointed that again a NYTimes columnist treats a clearly systemic problem with piecemeal solutions that put the onus on individuals. I understand that systemic problems are much more difficult to discuss, let alone solve, but our environmental degradation perhaps more than any of our challenges, can’t be treated seriously in such a manner. It’s like trying to pay off the national debt with a bake sale or build a house with a toy hammer. People don’t want to hear it, I suppose, because it’s scary, but our economic system is incompatible with life on Earth.
32
@Kryztoffer Systems analysis may be insightful, academically appealing but it is disempowering. Behavior, which always boils down to individuals is what has to change. The onus has to be with individuals.
13
@hpower. Our “environmental” problem shows us that the “individual” is an illusion, a useful, fun one, but a fiction nonetheless. That’s neither academic nor disempowering. Admittedly, it may seem so at first, but the day we recognize, deep in our bones that we are all headed one place, back to the Earth we are a part of, is the day we acquire real power to act. Everything else is academic.
17
I really appreciated the practical things I can do. Yes I will vote against environmentally destructive government also. But this list makes me feel more empowered.
13
After a reed planting program around the lake in my local park, not only do we have more water birds, but this past spring for the first time I can remember, for several weeks this spring (mating season?) the frog croaking was positively deafening. Whenever I managed, by peering into the reeds, to actually see a frog, it made me as happy as it did when I was a child out roaming with my brothers and sister. Like “canaries in coal mines” frogs are considered a sentinel species and its heartening that something as simple as re-planting reeds can help sustain their population.
45
It's like voting...one vote seems little, but once votes accumulate, the result is overpowering. Even in small garden spaces, planting indigenous plants, especially those native to the area, will attract indigenous insects and birds. It may seem little, but once these efforts accumulate, the result could be overpowering. And thankyou Margaret for your beautifully written book....
17
I think we’re almost the only yard in the neighborhood that has absolutely no chemicals of any kind applied to it. None.
What does that tell you?
I couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about our grass. It’s nicely mowed. That’s good enough. And we welcome birds.
At least we know they’re safe in our little scratch of the earth.
25
@There/Theree Well manicured space=dead zone.
1
Thank you especially for the "to do" list. The warnings are (rightfully) ominous, but things we can do provide hope.
I look forward to Renkl articles ...
10
I am always grateful for this author’s insights and comments, and this development is too troubling to ignore.
9
Cats are NOT the main contributor to bird mortality - any wildlife biologist will tell you that, although cats are certainly are part of the problem.
Habitat alteration by humans is the main cause of population decline of birds and almost all other wild species. Most cannot adapt quickly enough where humans have drastically changed their environment.
The human species is way over-populated for the good of the planet and all other species. A one child per family regulation might help but it would have to come about very much sooner rather than later.
13
@Kaari
We're talking about domesticated cats - and they ARE a major part of human alteration of the environment, with respect to their many prey species (according to biologists, like Pete Marra).
20
>>>Cats are NOT the main contributor to bird mortality
Nothing in this article said cats are the main contributor to bird mortality nor did the Science article.
@carl bumba - You don't really want to see the end of outdoor cats, whether domestic or feral. You would quickly see an explosion in rodents. It is not just what they eat or kill; it is their presence in the environment as they patrol and investigate that keeps rodent numbers down. Killing a few songbirds is a small price to pay. As the other commentator said, it is human population and degradation of the environment that is killing off the birds.
Excellent, honest and disturbing piece. Like many, it mirrors my experience. I’ve lived in the same place for many years and there’re fewer insects and small creatures like snails and spiders around. I used to have to walk carefully after a rain shower to avoid treading on slugs and snails but a few years ago they completely vanished. They used to be prolific but they are gone. And the animals that rely on them for food - like the lizards - are seen less often. This is just the tip of an international crisis and we need decisive action, not just at the grassroots level, but from the top down. I hope we get it before it’s too late.
13
As a small example of how we could help birds out, but don’t. I despair here in San Francisco when I see our neighborhood groups and local Park and Recs spend scarce resources on excessively tidying and clearing areas of anise. This is a pretty plant and it is generally teeming here with bees and other pollinators. It out competes noxious foxtail grass, and is a host for the Anise Swallowtail butterfly who lays its eggs on it. Which turn into plump caterpillars. For some reason, because it is successful and seen as a ‘weed’, it is cleared despite the potential abundance it produces. Could we humans put up with just a little ‘untidyness’ in the name of Mother Nature? Neighborhood groups seem so proud when they clear areas f this plant - apparently completely ignorant of its benefits. And, to be clear, most of the Anise/Fennel plants being cleared are not blocking visibility, nor creating any kind of hazard.
68
I have birds and bees. I have flowers and fruit trees .
Bird feeders too.
No lawn chem trail. I shake out bird seeds onto our grass and now it’s mostly clover and plaintain and daddelion all cut and thick with moisture and worms. It looks very natural and I am helping my birds.
Don’t be afraid of neighborhood pressure about uniform weed free lawns. Carpet lawns kill wildlife. Some “ weeds” are quite beautiful.
56
Thank you for writing this. I hope it will push people to take steps to stem the losses. Here in British Columbia forests are being eradicated to permit warp speed development. People move here in droves from Alberta because they prefer the weather and then proceed to cut down every tree in sight. Birds have been steadily disappearing for a while, but the rate seems to have sped up markedly in the last five years. I weep for the natural world humans are destroying.
32
@Donna
Thanks for the thoughtful comments.
1
On a recent trip to NW Washington State my spouse and I noticed an unusual silence in the forest. Not many birds. Concerning to us at the time.
16
Leaf blowers, aside from their ability to release pollutants (gas models), are known to disrupt nesting behaviors including abandonment of young. There are many resources available through your county extension offices for getting advice on no-grass landscapes and native plants that attract birds and insects.
14
Organic farming is well-meaning, but without both GMO and industrial farming techniques we will need significantly more farmland per human, which in turn drives destruction of wilderness and forest, which then in turn causes death of the fauna you intended to protect and preserve.
Much of the other advice given is closer to virtue signalling than meaningful action. The birds will not be saved by a few NYT readers planting nut-bearing trees, nor will they be saved by coastal Americans eating at organic bakeries.
The only way the birds (and all of us in your 'mine') will be saved is with bold and brave international policymaking that aggressively reduces pollution at the industrial level and curtails worldwide population growth.
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@Alexander
This is nonsense in so many ways. Increasing population demands in the world have been largely met without GMO and industrial farming techniques, which are relatively recent phenomena that actually reduce the capacity of the earth to support us (and other species) over time. These methods heavily exploit water and energy (mostly petrochemical) resources and heavily pollute. The vast majority of the farmland used for such intensive farming is for row crops - and most of this is for livestock feed, which inefficiently supports the meat-rich diets of the very wealthiest humans or, more recently, used to produce biofuels, also very inefficiently. Large-scale production (and its large-scale regulation) is the problem, not the solution. Small scale agriculture based on the utilization and conservation of resources, as opposed to exploitation and consuption of them, is the best way for humans to live sustainable (and healthfully) on earth, even at high population levels. Number of people is less of a factor than is the resource consumption level per individual, which varies hugely. Your "better living through chemistry (or genetic engineering)" propaganda from Dow (or ADM, Cargill, Monsanto/Bayer, etc.) does not address any of this, of course.
16
@Alexander
Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
2
There is prediction that human population will rise in the future. It will certainly occupied more lands for them.The wild live will be marginalized.We are curious if we could live without wild live and what will it give an impact to us.
4
Hardly the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. Indeed because of the coal - and the oil and the natural gas and the habitat loss - we are now far, far down the road to catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown. I do wish it weren't so, but the science is clear and getting clearer every day. The only thing that will save us now is a massive climate and habitat mobilization. And the only way to get that is to wake a whole lot of people up. So join the movement, make noise, raise your voice, do all you can to wake everyone up.
35
If the loss of birdsong in the dawning light of the new day doesn’t stir your soul to action, it is unclear what will. This is a lovely article about a tragic element of our unfolding habitat and climate change crisis. My only quibble is with this one sentence:
“More than anything, it will require a comprehensive understanding that wildlife needs are human needs.”
While I acknowledge the point you are making, I think the emphasis should be different.
More than anything it will require a comprehensive understanding that this planet does NOT BELONG TO HUMAN BEINGS. We have one small niche here, together with our fellow creatures. Their needs are THEIR NEEDS, not ours, and deserve our respect and attentive and humble action.
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@Paul McGlasson Bless you Mr McGlasson. There's always one voice in the crowd that stands out. We are not alone. We are not in charge.
Step one in saving the birds: vote out every Republican currently serving in any elected federal or state government position.
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@Vesuviano It's the Republicans that are killing the birds? Um, nope. It's spraying for mosquitoes, destruction of habitat, and too many humans. All are responsible.
1
@Ma
My point is that Republicans simply never back a pro-environment piece of legislation. They will always vote in favor of the pesticide company, the polluting factory, or the destruction of habitat. Mass extinction of birds, bees, or pretty much anything else is not important to them.
Feel free to prove me wrong, but unless you do I stand by my original post.
7
Birds are dying worldwide, not just in N. America: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/2018-global-report-40-of-worlds-birds-are-in-decline/ .
The greatest threats, according to that essay linked above:
"Agriculture has the biggest impact of all human activities on birds, threatening 74 percent of the 1,469 species at risk of extinction. Logging impacts 50 percent of the threatened species, invasive species 39 percent, hunting 35 percent, and climate change and severe weather 33 percent. Other threats include development, wildfires, energy production and mining, and pollution."
39
@JSK Very grim
1
Great article, Ms. Renkl. I appreciate the helpful list of things individuals can do. And when individuals become educated and group together to solve environmental problems, they can cause industries to change.
22
According to a recent report on the human production of greenhouse gases by the vast industrial production of meat, that very profitable industry produces far more greenhouse gas than any other single activity. As the populations in various countries attain improved incomes, the popular consumption of meat increases immensely. The attempts to decrease the human production of global warming gases cannot succeed as long as the meat industry continues to produce these heat inducing atmospheric gases which will destroy much of life on the planet, birds and humans included. The indications seem to be that the daily habits of the human population and the huge profitability if the meat industries present obstacles to life survival on the planet that cannot be overcome.
15
I'd like to know what's causing the decline. Of course climate change and pesticides are key suspects, but we should do the research to understand the precise causes. This will improve the chances of solving the problem or at least reducing it.
5
I grew up in a suburb of Ottawa, the last one before open fields (ajacent to the NRC for those who know Ottawa) but still very close to the city . I remember all sorts of winged insects, birds, snakes, frogs and toads, even muskrats in the ditch in front of our house. Yet Parliament Hill was a mere 25 minutes away by bus, 15 minutes if you drove. Yes it was a development, built in the 50s, but nature was right there with us. Now of course the suburbs extend for 10 miles past that point and there is no wildlife to speak of. I pity the children who do not have the opportunity to experience the natural world first hands like I did, limited as the experience was. I'm sure D. Trump would have been a better man, certainly more sensitive to the environment, if he had been able to gather frog eggs and tadpoles in a glass jar...and experience the sadness of seeing them die because they were pulled from their environment. What a lesson that was.
24
The number and diversity of extinctions is alarming. And much of this extinction appears to be related to environmental changes caused by man, both local and worldwide. But this process is only half the story. While we are losing lifelong companions, we are gaining new ones. The study of emergent species is known as speciation. And it focuses on the future of life rather than the past. Extinction is just half the story. Making sense of speciation is the other, more complex half. Popular scientists would do the public a great service by discussing what is being learned by sophisticated research regarding contemporary speciation.
5
@michjas
I'm sorry for acting immodest here, but the story is 99% one of DECLINE - in terms of both species diversity (number of species) and abundances (number of individuals). Changes in these over time, whether positive or negative, are relative to the past. There is no 'bright story pointing to the future' (nor 'better living through chemistry'). Such balms have led to the human-driven problems we now have. The 'good news' is that the real story is much deeper and richer than this.
9
@michjas
New bacteria and viruses certainly but what are these new bird species taking the place of the deceased?
1
I happen to be studying Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott written 200 years ago. The setting of the story is the 12th century. We are at a point in the book where the Black Knight is traveling in a dense forest and night time is upon him. Being lost he knows he will likely have to sleep on the ground in the forest without food. HIs horse had been doing battle in jousting matches all day, and has carried the Knight for hours afterwards. The Black Knight has heard how horses when they are given free rein know instinctively how to find there way out of predicaments. He loosens the reins on his horse and lets the horse take over. The horse finds his way out of the forest and leads the Knight to a hermit/friar's hut.
Why don't we pay more attention to animals and learn from them instead of thinking of them sometimes as a nuisance?
They say dogs give their owners "unconditional" love. We could start by giving unconditional kindness to each other and to the animal species.
I saw 30 birds lined up in a row on a high wire and one bird above them all sitting on top of the pole so I am wondering if he/she was their leader. The irony is that many of the challenges humans faced in the 12 th Century are still with us today, yet animals live pretty much the same lives they lived 800 years ago but are living it in smaller areas as we humans crowd them out.
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@Tom oysterman
Beautifully written with a unique analogy. Thank you.
22
Interesting. I’m also reading Ivanhoe at this moment! And I, too, was struck by the idea of allowing the horse to find its way.
7
@Tom osterman
Brilliant, and true.
1
Thank you for this article that brings us back to earth. The list of household directives is useful. Readers that raise the question of these canaries being symbolic of our extinction is a powerful question. Our current leaders are paving the way. Beyond this household list, we must clean up the oval office and Senate. And beyond this we must start to question worldviews that do not engage us with care for creation.
22
3 billion birds may have disappeared but Republican campaign donors are happy. What's more important in D.C., the birds or the donors?
17
Having gotten rid of 90% of my lawn and populated that space with plants for pollinators and fruit trees for us, I am transfixed by all the creatures visiting. When I got too close to a kumquat tree, the squawking I heard was deafening because the adult birds had built a nest in the kumquat tree. I have shared my fruit with neighbors, but unfortunately, I am still viewed by neighbors and code enforcement as a kook. I am currently reading Ms. Renkl's book "Late Migrations" and would highly recommend it. I can only read a chapter or two a night because the writing is so poignant and thought provoking and I am looking at things in a more mindful way.
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@theconstantgardener
" I can only read a chapter or two a night because the writing is so poignant and thought provoking and I am looking at things in a more mindful way"
Lovely post. Living seriously does take a "lot of thought" and we should give a "lot of time" to it.
The world needs more kooks if that is what we are.
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@theconstantgardener - You might want to read "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold. It is a reflection on the environment by a forest ranger, ecologist. It is an easy read. And Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring is an easy read, too.
30
@theconstantgardener Wow, can I ever relate to your comment about neighbors viewing you as a kook! I am at this time in the process of digging out my lawn and replacing it with southern California native plants. I am very excited by this project. In order to preserve as much of the native soil as possible I am down on my hands and knees pulling out lawn, crabgrass and weed roots and sifting them out of the dirt. I'm far from the first person in my neighborhood to make this change, though I am probably the most manual in method. Even after explaining to passersby what I am doing and why, they keep making comments about it. I go so far as to explain that there are 7 billion of us and what each of us is doing at this time accumulates to a big consequence. I hope this soaks in for them.
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I have devoted half of my ten acres to wildlife. The other half that I have fenced in, and that I use, is planted for bird habitat. I can’t control what is going on in other parts of the country, or the world, but I can do my small part. My property is teeming with birds.
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@Passion for Peaches . Your contribution here is HAVING ten acres. If we all lived at that density, the wild species would be doing quit well, thank you.
7
I'm sorry Ms Renkl but organic farms are not chemical-free. They use almost as many chemicals as conventional farming and some that are worse such as the very toxic copper sulfate. Organic farming methods, because they produce less food per acre than conventional methods and have a larger carbon footprint, are only adding to the problem.
5
Please provide more info than that. Seems false in every sense.
1
Thank you, Margaret Renkl - your words are wise and inspiring. My heart breaks over the harm to species and their habitats reported so often these days, but 3 billion birds is a real gut punch. I've got my brush pile, my native plants, my birdbath - but meanwhile, all sorts of legal protections for these precious creatures are being eliminated. We really may be facing a silent spring, permanently.
15
Canaries in the coal mine were an asset to save our planet. The birds in the wild dying is a sign that the world could be ending some day. It is important to keep our air, water and land free of pollution and each one of us on our planet should do our part instead of relying on politicians and polluting corporation and someone else. We also need to take advantage of the scientific advances that tell us for instance smoking is injurious to our health. We don't need canaries to be smoking second second smoke to warn us of lung cancers.
7
Please buy organic products whenever possible: corn and soy products, and cotton clothing, Support local organic farms by making weekly vegetable purchases through CSAs. Large scale industrial farming with heavy use of pesticides and herbicides is responsible for much of the decimation of insect and bird species.
29
Seems like each day Trump and the Republicans take an action which will make our planet less & less inhabitable for our children and grandchildren.
The window of opportunity to effectively mitigate Climate Change is rapidly disappearing.
The remaining 2020 Democratic Candidates will try to cut & paste portions of Governor Jay Inslee’s comprehensive & actionable Climate Change Mitigation Plan.
We must go with the Real Deal.
The winning Democratic Party 2020 Ticket: President Warren (save the economy) + Vice President Inslee (save the planet)! W+IN 2020!
85
@Phillip Stephen Pino
The planet and the economy likely cannot both be saved. But I favor the environment, given a choice. The single most impactful long-term action any of us can take is to have one or fewer children and to promote the use of birth control throughout the world.
4
I have a significant family history of Parkinson's disease. There is both genetic and environmental influences for Parkinson's but what and how much I don't know. I avoid pesticides and herbicides (with rare exceptions) not just for our family but for the well-being of all the wonderful flora and fauna around us. We have more weeds than our neighbors, but I do my best.
I grew up in the more remote Chicago suburbs with a large yard backing on railroad and swamp. We had honeybees and fireflies and they were a joy. Fifty - sixty years later, we live in suburban upstate NY, with "forever wild" woodlands behind us. I still see fireflies, and they still bring me joy, but they are rare. I've read fireflies are a gauge of the damage we do. So, in spite of still having birds that bring me joy, I realize how fragile our community is.
37
@R Kennedy My father had a rare disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. It is a Parkinsonism - having some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease but not Parkinson's. Little is known what causes it. However, conventional farmers have a higher incidence of having it, most likely because of their exposure to pesticides and/or herbicides.
I've been eating 90 percent organic food for the last 25 years and I never put pesticides or herbicides on my garden and yard. I don't want to end up like my dad. Progressive supranuclear palsy is a cruel disease.
8
@the quiet one, I’m sorry for your troubles. I just researched PSP online and found no connection to pesticide exposure, or correlation with incidence in farmers. But there was some correlation with years of drinking well water and exposure to toxic metals.
Thank you for bringing this to the forefront. We need to protect and help these delightful creatures.
10
Is there anything you'd recommend in substitution for the brush pile? Snakes are an issue in my area and I've always been taught to never let them build up for fear of creating a place for snakes to hide, but I'd like to still help the birds.
11
@James Tapscott We have the same issue in my region of Florida. Native plantings of all heights and “bushy-ness” provide safe harbors for birds in many cases; we don’t provide brush piles though. As I’m sure you know, many snakes are helpful natural predators of other vermin, but snakes also raid bird nests. We don’t repel or harm them, but we don’t provide habitat for them either. Nature is complicated!
10
@James Tapscott, Wasn’t it Bill Bryson who said everything in Australia is trying to kill you? You have some really scary snakes! The only venomous snakes I have to deal with here (I encourage the nonvenomous species) are rattlesnakes, so I can speak about their habits only. They are less likely to be in a brush pile than they are in high grass of among rocks or cuddled up to landscape timbers, because they want heat. I have had dogs bitten by them, and I have killed many rattlers over the years. (Don’t judge me, readers, unless you have had a dog bitten by a rattler, or nearly been bitten yourself.) What I have done to control the rattlers is keep wild grass and weeds mowed down, so there is a wide break between wildland and my garden and house. I keep the snake food population down (rodents), as much as I can. Rattlers are territorial, so once you get them off your property and you keep an eye on your perimeter, you aren’t likely to see them so often.
Maybe you could stack up some branches and such on a raised platform, with a snake guard on the support poles?
"A true solution will require concerted effort: the political will to address climate change, conservation strategies that restore habitat, policies that consider wildlife needs as well as human needs. More than anything, it will require a comprehensive understanding that wildlife needs are human needs."
Thank you for this and all your columns, Margaret Renkl, you are a breath of fresh air in a section of the country that seems sometimes obtuse and suffocating. Routinely navigating around Nashville observing the time, effort, energy, and attention being paid to perfectly manicured and meticulous lawns, I often think: If this amount of resources were going to food forests and yard gardens, Nashville could feel the entire state of Tennessee...
28
Ms Renkle thank you for your columns. Reading them always leaves me feeling more hopeful and empowered instead of completely in despair. The news is not good but there are definitely things we can do to help these beautiful creatures we share this planet with. Creating pollinator pathways should be included as part of any infrastructure plan. In my area people are starting to take action creating such spaces. The corruption and lack of will power in Washington to be proactive on this issue has helped inspire local action to take hold. You are a part of helping to make that happen. Thank you to you and the NYT for staying on the topic.
50
I have multiple feeders. The Blue Jays used to love the peanut feeder. I have kept it filled these past 3 years and haven't seen a single Blue Jay? I have also witnessed the scarcity of other species. My backyard is only a small sample, but it is disconcerting as I have established bird-friendly plants, shrubbery and trees.
36
@Spanky
I used to see blue jays in my yard all the time. If I'm not mistaken, they had a squawk that I found mildly irritating. This year I can't recall having seen any. There are a couple of fat cats that prowl around. The neighbors don't keep them in. That's probably part of why. Huge warehouse development has brought tractor trailers and more ozone and smog into town. The highway rumble is ever present. I used to spray some of my roses, realizing too late what this was probably doing to birds. If I were a blue jay, or any other type of a bird, I'd have moved out, too. Shame. A world without birds. There's an old guy in town with a shotgun who goes out on the river all the time looking for duck and goose. There used to be huge numbers of seagulls, but they closed the dump, and the gulls all moved on. The irony of it.
5
@AJ Unlikely to be the cats more likely your use of toxic spray
1
Fat cats are not good bird hunters. It takes agility to catch a bird.
1
The advice on what a reader can do is good, but it stops short. To truly save nature there is only one path — for humans to completely retreat from dominating and exploiting all the world's resources. Certainly this includes the most basic choice of all, lowering the human population. Given the inertia involved this is all but impossible, so we ourselves will inevitably face the same terminal problem as the birds.
283
@brian carter - while we're waiting for natural population decline which is not forecast to begin until the early 22nd century (all going well...!) it would be easier and much less drastic in the short term for everyone to consume less. We could cut our consumption in half right now; much less traumatic than culling half the population.
18
@brian carter
Humans want more “stuff” and they want it NOW.
They aren’t wired to save themselves in this situation.
I’m afraid you are right.
12
@brian carter - well, if population growth leads to mass starvation, maybe the problem is self-correcting.
6
I love this talk by Doug Tallamy: 'Restoring Nature's Relationships': www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzcz8dWyBc.
which explains another aspect of keeping our birds.
He argues that in order to keep our song birds, parent birds must be able to find enough food to keep their baby birds alive; And caterpillars are THE essential food. Caterpillars come big enough and nutritiously dense enough to make it possible to feed the baby enough. Seeds or little insects require too many trips in a day for the baby to survive.
And in order to grow enough caterpillars, we need to plant native plants. Insects and their caterpillars don't move with the non-native plants so it's our native plants covered with caterpillars that are needed to keep our songbirds alive.
111
If you read the paper in Science you’ll see that both waterfowl and wetland habitat have increased instead of decreased—making that category of birds and habitat one of the few outliers. This increase in numbers was largely attributed to the funds and efforts of hunting and the sporting community. Perhaps we should look at what these communities do and implement taxes on stuff like backpacks, outdoor clothing, and shoes for bird and habitat restoration.
27
I stopped putting out birdseed due to neighborhood cats killing too many birds, but the real problem is formal lawns, habitat destruction, and too many humans.
237
@bobdc6
Don’t disagree with you re. habitat distraction and too many humans, but house cats kill 1-4 billion birds annually in the continental US. Cats live longer and healthier lives if they are kept indoors.
19
@bobdc6
Better to make all cats stay indoors by legal means. Untagged cats should be picked up by animal patrol and euthanized. Cats that escape a couple of times can be returned to owner. But three strikes you're out for people could work for cats.
The presence of cats in several cases in AUS and New Zealand has led to the extinction of native species.
2
Here's something everyone can do:
I'm assuming the unusually literate and well-informed readers of the Times know that, on an individual basis, the single most powerful thing anyone can do is to eat less meat.
And I fully understand there are many people who know this, struggle with it, and feel guilty about it.
So here's what you can do, each and every one of you.
Encourage anyone you know who eats relatively little plant-based foods, and who you sense would be open to it, to try adding just ONE new vegetable dish each week.
That's it. No rules, no ingredient-consciousness, no hectoring, no judgments about meat-eating, no climate-harangues.
That's one thing.
And if you want, start a meetup. Start a neighborhood group, or an apartment pot-luck (has the added plus of creating community - which by the way has physical and psychological benefits) and support each other in coming up with dishes that are easy to prepare, likely to be eaten again and again, and that everyone loves.
What does this have to do with the metaphorical (and literal) canaries?
Less meat, more land available, less poisons injected into animals, into the land, into the water, into the air. More land available, more possibilities for birds - and for all of us.
www.remember-to-breathe.org
166
@Don Salmon Yes, indeed! And, might I venture to add, we can perhaps outgrow the defensive stance that views the advocacy of plant-based eating as a form of "hectoring." Factory farming is devouring habitats, eradicating species, inflicting torture, and accelerating climate change...so instead of "struggling" with our guilt, or resenting those who model a plant-based diet, let's take an upbeat approach to saving wildlife and ourselves by switching to that diet. We will see more birds, inflict less agony, and feel less guilt.
35
@refudiate
I agree that we should not see this advocacy as hectoring. I'm just acknowledging that a large number of people do, and am looking for a way to reach them without alienating them.
But hey, any suggestions on how to do this? I'm all ears:>)
16
@Don Salmon Great idea. I have started eating veggie pizza instead of meat. I've started having more bean burritos than chicken ones. I still eat meat occasionally but I've eliminated beef which is the worse offender. Baby steps are better than no steps.
42
The sad thing is that we knew this was happening. Birders saw the declines every year in the Audubon Christmas count. It is mostly because of the increase in the human population, which has doubled in the past 50 years in the U.S.
I was not surprised by this at all, and neither was anyone who paid any attention to wildlife the last few decades.
We just keep crowding animals out, and our chemicals of all kinds overflow into wild areas.
This was no secret, it was just confirming what any animal lover has seen. Unfortunately, most of us don't get it and don't really care.
No wonder sensitive young people are rebelling.
I have little hope for the future of life on this planet as long as we keep breeding and consuming the way we do.
I really doubt people will change.
I just hope the planet has time to recover and re-evolve once we humans are gone, before the sun swells and it's all over, which looks like maybe less than 500 million years - not billions.
Good luck.
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@Dan Barker
Yes, I agree with you. The extinctions are due primarily to habitat loss and pollution. Wikipedia says: "overharvesting, pollution, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species (such as new predators and food competitors), overhunting, and other influences. Explosive, unsustainable human population growth is an essential cause of the extinction crisis." Yet this author has to point the obligatory finger at "climate deniers," when "global warming" or "climate change" is not even on the list. Makes you wonder.
14
@Alison Maynard You do realize that a number of those factors that you mention are a result of or exacerbated by climate change, don't you?
3
>>>Unfortunately, most of us don't get it and don't really care.
Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. It's sad but true Dan.
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Thanks. These will be memories that we will hold in the future as the water gets hotter, boiling the frogs that are humanity. One thing we need, as a society if not a species, is to step away from short term profit as the ONLY measure of worth. SUre, intensive agriculture is great for producing lots of food profitably. But only if one restricts their measure of value to short term profits. When the scope is expanded to the long term viability of the land and the impact of waste on the planet the equation changes. The old ways sustained people for millennia. I have my doubts that the new intensive, high profit approach will be viable for even a century.
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Margaret, thank you for your thoughts. I do enjoy reading your columns, mostly happy , but some as startling as this. As a member of the conservation commission in my small town, I have helped keep many of our open spaces free. It is difficult for short term thinkers to understand that we need to share the environment not exploit it. I love the birds in my small piece of the world. The words of Rachel Carson are constantly ringing in my ears, and one our conservation agent quotes. "Conservation is a cause that has no end. There is no point at which we will say our work is finished" - Rachel Carson, Thank you.
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Appreciated your article! Interesting how simple to begin to take care and improve our environment. Thank you
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