9 ms·

Disagree with this. According to this article, birds aren't dying off because people choose the almighty dollar, they're dying because they smash into windows o

• cmurf 5y ago
  And make outdoor cats illegal. An unpopular opinion no doubt. But from nature photographers to veterinarians, the outdoor cat is not good for anyone, including the cat.
  • digitaltrees 5y ago
    Our door cats have existed for millennia. Pesticides have not. I don’t think outdoor cats are the problem. Pesticides have killed most of the bug biomass in the last several decades and now birds are being affected.
    • drran 5y ago
      I cannot understand why DDT is forbidden, but 10000x more powerful insecticides are not forbidden. WTF? Birds are dropping from the sky in Spring, because they have nothing to eat, because bugs are gone while seeds are not ready yet. Also, air pollution makes them weak. Birds are much more sensitive to air pollution and CO2 level, because they breathe at much higher rate while they have much lower mass than land animals.
  • Spooky23 5y ago
    I blame online communities for this. Cat ladies are insane and organized now. In my city, there’s a group distributing shelters and placing them in various outdoor areas to keep feral cats alive over the winter. They are as nutty as the pigeon feeders, except the cats kill everything in sight.
    • pirate787 5y ago
      We have a group like this, which feeds a couple dozen feral cats on "Kitty Cat Lane." Of course there is science behind the insanity -- toxoplasmosis infections from the cats they love.
      • Spooky23 5y ago
        Our local Nextdoor exploded when some particularly nutty cat vigilante started stealing cats and spaying them. I think as society sprawls out and folks have fewer kids, this stuff gets escalated.
        • jollybean 5y ago
          These comments are disturbingly out of touch. 'Neuter and Release' programs are common, supported and sanctioned by animal shelters, usually local vets provide their services for free, and the point is to provide basic medical for the animals while at the same time trying to control excess populations. Calling them 'Nutty cat lady vigilantes' would be like calling people 100 years ago providing shelter for abused women 'Marriage Wreckers'.
          • Spooky23 5y ago
            This particular group of self-described activists were running a squeegee guy scam with cats. They were stealing pets and shaking down the owners for cash.
      • jollybean 5y ago
        Enough with the petty, denigrating attacks people helping mostly harmless animals, which is a generally good thing. These rescuers/helpers run 'neuter and release' programs and are keen on having population control, not increasing the number of rogue cats.
        • thatguy0900 5y ago
          Mostly harmless to you... What a strange thing to call what is effectively an apex suburban predator that is known to kill for fun with no intention of eating.
  • ostenning 5y ago
    Its a solid point. I'm not sure what the average ownership of cats are, but I would imagine every 3rd or 4th person in my friendship network to own one. I would imagine at least over 100 million cats in north America to which most owners probably let them outside to hunt wild life.
  • lettergram 5y ago
    Bob cats, mountain lions, etc used to have the entire US as their range. I suspect the bird population boomed after we got rid of the cats (100-150 years ago). Now that we have house cats they’re dropping again. Boom-bust cycles for animals are common. I try to reflect what the natural order was 10,000 years ago and reflect. 20,000 years ago, there was an ice sheet over North America - ie no birds. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_Ice_Sheet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_Ice_Sheet
    • AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Unless you're talking about the lynx (which mainly eats hares), the historic ranges of American cats barely overlap with LGM ice cover. It's not very relevant to this discussion.
  • charcircuit 5y ago
    >including the cat But my cat likes going outside. He likes catching birds.
    • arbitrary_name 5y ago
      I like birds, i like them alive. I would like your car to not go outside and catch birds.
  • simonsarris 5y ago
    That seems very silly. The concept of an indoor or outdoor cat didn't even exist until one hundred years ago. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=outdoor+cat%2C+indoor+cat&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Coutdoor%20cat%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cindoor%20cat%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=outdoor+cat%2C...
  • elihu 5y ago
    Would that even be beneficial? If the problem is that there are fewer insects and therefore the birds have less food, then cats suppressing the bird population might have a positive impact on insects, which the birds eat. That might be good for birds too in the long run. Predators are part of a feedback loop. That the predators in question are housecats makes it a somewhat unnatural feedback loop, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad. Housecats are part of the food chain as well; they can be killed by cayotes and raccoons, and hawks might sometimes go after a small cat.
  • ca01an 5y ago
    Not sure what it is like in the US, but in the UK, the RSPB doesn't seem to think cats are a major cause of bird population decline https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden-birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/ https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/gardening-...
• swayvil 5y ago
  He didn't say money, he said like money.
• photochemsyn 5y ago
  That's not what the original paper says. This is why you want to read the actual scientific paper and not the article about it. The researchers, in the article's text, state: > "Steep declines in North American birds parallel patterns of avian declines emerging globally (14, 15, 22, 24). In particular, depletion of native grassland bird populations in North America, driven by habitat loss and more toxic pesticide use in both breeding and wintering areas (25), mirrors loss of farmland birds throughout Europe and elsewhere (15). Even declines among introduced species match similar declines within these same species’ native ranges (26). Agricultural intensification and urbanization have been similarly linked to declines in insect diversity and biomass (27), with cascading impacts on birds and other consumers (24, 28, 29). Given that birds are one of the best monitored animal groups, birds may also represent the tip of the iceberg, indicating similar or greater losses in other taxonomic groups (28, 30)." This points to agricultural pesticides having impacts on insect populations, and additionally this mirrors where losses have been most extreme, in grasslands most impacted by agricultural activity: > "Across breeding biomes, grassland birds showed the largest magnitude of total population loss since 1970—more than 700 million breeding individuals across 31 species— and the largest proportional loss (53%); 74% of grassland species are declining. (Fig. 1 and Table 1)." I've made it a habit to always seek out the original paper instead of just reading the 'science journalism' take on it, for reasons like this. https://www.flatheadaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Rosenberg-et-al-Science-Sept-2019.pdf https://www.flatheadaudubon.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/R...
  • helmholtz 5y ago
    Brilliant, thank you for that effort, especially the direct link to the PDF. A third of the bird population gone in the 50 years since 1970. As he says in Blood Diamond, "Will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? ..." The future is here and the future bites.
  • throwawaylinux 5y ago
    This illustrates why it's a terrible shame that the overpopulation topic has effectively been silenced and demonized in science conservationism and environmentalism. I frequently get people becoming wildly irrational and upset at me when I suggest that the current population is not supported by the earth sustainably, let alone a much larger one. They'll angrily insist that the earth's "carrying capacity" is 20, 50, 100 billion people! Or that countries should be looking to increase their populations, or that natural population stability and decline is a terrible thing. As though we have not _already_ caused (and are continuing to cause) a great extinction event almost entirely before any significant effects from greenhouse gas emissions have made an impact. Habitat destruction, chemical pollution, mining, mineral and fossil fuel depletion, water depletion and contamination, farming practices and monocultures, human interference, etc., are all just horrific, are responsible for massive destruction and extinction of the environment, and aren't all suddenly going to get magic'ed away the instant we somehow get the GHG pollution thing under control (if we ever do). The funny thing about that is, if our population was a very healthy, say, 5% of its current level, greenhouse gas emissions would be practically a non-issue too. The problem would literally be solved. Gradually moving toward cleaner and more renewable sources of course should and would happen, but while that was responsibly and efficiently changing, there would be no imminent climate catastrophe occurring. EDIT: It's happening again.
• abeppu 5y ago
  Actually, is that really what the article said? > Experts believe that habitat loss due to agricultural development and intensification is most likely the driving factor. But I don't think the numbers in the article make sense together. > wild bird populations in the continental U.S. and Canada have declined by 29 percent—or a total net loss of around three billion birds—since 1970. > between 365 million and one billion birds die each year across the U.S. as a result of window strikes.) > pet felines kill some 2.6 billion birds annually in the U.S. alone. So ... the total decline over 50 years (~3B) is approximately the same as the annual deaths from cats and windows at somewhere between a quarter and a third of all birds? I think this is one of those cases where uncritically accepting estimates from independent sources who used different methods produces an incoherent picture.
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    I think the honest answer is that we just don't have nearly as much surety around these numbers as you might expect. I went looking for data on actual bird populations, and I get wildly different estimates. The 3 billion number comes from the following source (as far as I can tell): " Critical data were contributed by citizen-science participants in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, North American Breeding Bird Survey, and other bird-monitoring initiatives. The Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database was a critical source for the data. " - https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/ https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/ Nat Geo quotes " New research estimates there are between 50 billion and 430 billion birds on Earth. " - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-many-birds-are-there-in-the-world-science-estimates https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/how-many-... A lot of articles seem to quote the "at least 50 billion" line, probably based on the above numbers. Basically - I'd say we have no idea how many birds there really are. Take ALL numbers involved as wild guesses.
  • __s 5y ago
    Counting population based on deaths alone isn't accurate If the ecosystem is healthy, a dozen birds dying will make way for a dozen more to replace them
  • vertak 5y ago