The verb form of "effect" just means "bring about" and it makes sense here.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/326/
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/326/
“It’s the first time really that we’ve seen this quite obvious, large-scale impact of what we’re doing in our own backyards and how that’s bringing about the composition of the birds that we see around us,” says Plummer.
Plummer meant that bird feeders are changing (i.e. affecting) the composition, not causing or bringing about (i.e. effecting) the composition.
Plummer recently published a paper on the topic that uses affect and effect many times and each use of affect is as a verb and effect as a noun:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10111-5
I’m certain the reporter made a transcription error while interviewing Plummer.
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/326:_Effect_an_Ef... goes into more depth about the distinction.
Finally, I just double-checked with my mom who has a bachelors in English, a masters in TESOL, and a doctorate in rhetoric and linguistics, and who has worked as an English professor and as an English tutor. She agrees that “effecting” is misused in the original sentence. Feel free to cite a more authoritative source than my mom. :-)
- "bird community composition also reacting promptly to the introduction and removal of feeding stations"
- "food resources provided by the British public have altered the composition"
- "feeding practices appear to have contributed significantly to the changing composition"
- "the composition of bird communities exploiting garden bird food has changed"
- "Changes in community composition"
The paper also contains 20+ uses of "effect" as a noun. Affected is clearly the intended word. The reporter made a mistake.
To "effect something" is to "cause it to occur" and in this case, bird feeding hasn't caused population composition to occur, but rather has changed the existing population composition.
BTW, I sent a DM to the reporter. I'll report back if he replies.
The reporter never replied, but the article has been corrected:
$ url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/07/dont-feed-wild-animals-except-birds/
$ links -dump "$url" > current.txt
$ links -dump "https://web.archive.org/web/20190705140555/$url" > archive.txt
$ diff archive.txt current.txt
134c134
< effecting the composition of the birds that we see around us,” says
---
> affecting the composition of the birds that we see around us,” says