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>The greatest danger to songbirds is human changes to the environment, not cats, by several orders of magnitude. Animals having predators is not exactly unnatur

by tw04 5y ago

>The greatest danger to songbirds is human changes to the environment, not cats, by several orders of magnitude. Animals having predators is not exactly unnatural, to put it carefully. We aren't going to stop creating buildings with windows. Outside of that, the largest killer of birds is by cats, by a long shot. Which is literally 100% preventable. And no, humans are NOT an order of magnitude more than cats, not even close. https://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/ https://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mor...

nosianu 5y ago
Given all the many articles about the decline of many kinds of birds, your claim that cats are to blame is plain wrong. That was not the conclusion in any of those many articles that we could read right here on HN. Lack of environment and of food - insects is the usual culprit named in them. Cats are one reason, but certainly not the dominating one. Neither would cats matter at all without the other reasons because there would be plenty of birds. In this discussion I'll take the downvotes with pride, this is getting ridiculous.
shkkmo 5y ago
You should read your sources more carefully. The article you posted explicitly makes the same argument as nosianu: > First, it should be stated that the single most significant threat to bird populations is habitat destruction, in all of its forms and with all of its causes. The various causes of mortality outlined below kill individual birds directly, and can certainly have an adverse effect on population size, but can actually have a beneficial effect in some cases. Studies of hunting have documented that in certain cases killing small numbers of birds can improve the health and survival of the remaining birds. As long as the habitat is intact, the population has the potential to replace the lost birds.

by tw04 5y ago

nosianu 5y ago

Given all the many articles about the decline of many kinds of birds, your claim that cats are to blame is plain wrong. That was not the conclusion in any of those many articles that we could read right here on HN. Lack of environment and of food - insects is the usual culprit named in them. Cats are one reason, but certainly not the dominating one. Neither would cats matter at all without the other reasons because there would be plenty of birds. In this discussion I'll take the downvotes with pride, this is getting ridiculous.

shkkmo 5y ago

You should read your sources more carefully. The article you posted explicitly makes the same argument as nosianu: > First, it should be stated that the single most significant threat to bird populations is habitat destruction, in all of its forms and with all of its causes. The various causes of mortality outlined below kill individual birds directly, and can certainly have an adverse effect on population size, but can actually have a beneficial effect in some cases. Studies of hunting have documented that in certain cases killing small numbers of birds can improve the health and survival of the remaining birds. As long as the habitat is intact, the population has the potential to replace the lost birds.