Mass die-off of birds in south-western US 'caused by starvation'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Weather-related events are pretty tough to predict and prevent. There are several things you can do that will have a direct effect on bird populations. I'm short on time, so I'll just list the two most impactful ones:
1. Keep your cat indoors. The low estimate for the number of birds killed in North America pet and feral cats is one billion birds a year. That doesn't include the many small mammal, reptile, and amphibian species which are the base of the food chain for larger species of birds.
2. Reduce your use of insecticides both directly and via store-bought foods. There's a lot of evidence that insect populations are experiencing a population collapse, likely due mostly to accumulated insecticides in the ecosystem.
I don't know. I've been considering pets for several months since I'm now spending so much time at home and, as for many people looking for some at home companionship, it comes down to dog or cat.
I've read a reasonable amount of material that suggests that if your cat is kept indoors it's a lot more likely to be unhappy. So if you must own a cat then keeping it indoors may not be the best strategy for the cat. On the other hand, the point about environmental impact of cats - killing of birds and other small animals - might be a really good argument against having cat full stop. If you can't keep it in a way that ensures its welfare whilst also ensuring that it doesn't cause havoc amongst the local wildlife, maybe don't get one at all.
Outdoor cats get in fights with other cats, spread disease via their waste, kill birds and wildlife. Neighbors also can mistake your cat for a feral one and call animal control or trap your cat: https://www.humanesociety.org/sites/default/files/docs/carin...
The other two (one born feral, one in a shelter) have zero interest in stalking birds. They're not lazy, just don't care about stalking birds, are more "dog-like" perhaps.
Point is, it's a proper subset of cats wreaking mayhem, and they have very varied personalities, which I offer as another datapoint.
I'm glad that you're taking the time to think through the responsibility that comes with getting a pet, but I think you are coming close to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here. just keep in mind that there are already more cats than homes willing to take them in (almost a million shelter cats are euthanized each year in the US alone). if we're talking adoption (and we really should be; deliberately breeding cats for sale is part of the problem, imo), you don't need to offer a perfect life for your prospective pet. you just need to offer a life that is worth living at all.
Completely agree here. We have four cats plus foster regularly... the catio definitely created net positive happiness, but the key is really just the elimination of boredom. Cats need stimulation just like people. Some toys, a tower, a good window - just keep on top of their needs and they will be happy
We finally got good at keeping the cat inside. Cat became super depressed.
Got a second cat. second cat peed in every laundry basket and bed in the house in a couple of days. Oh and first cat hated second cat.
Things have calmed down, and cats are happy, and we now have a gate to bedrooms.
Dogs are particularly bad. off leash owners cant control them, we have kill shelters, breeding for obscene prices, dog shit being left all over, dog fighting. Then people just don't know how to take care of them. I had a neighbor that left their dog outside for hours barking. such a nuisance for no reason, and that dog must have been living a miserable life. we keep breeding chihuahuas that no one wants, pitbulls that can't be adopted, and some of these pure breeds like bulldogs are just miserable, other pure breeds have health issues.
Cats we're already talking about.
To your point about kill shelters, I think the humane society has largely helped fixed this. There was an article on HN this week that claimed shelter killings was reduced from 20% down to 2% based on the efforts of the humane society since the 1970s.
I may be biased as a dog lover, but most of your arguments seem to be based on bad owners. If we can stop bad ownership we should do so but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t think bad parenting existing should be an excuse for abstaining from having children either, unless we regress to a misanthropic world view.
Disclaimer: I have a dog.
But what can you do about terrible owners? Are we going to take dogs away from owners that don't clean up poop or how do you handle communities that don't think their dog needs a leash.
We have laws against animal abuse. Some of these laws have strong teeth and can put abusers behind bars for years.
I have two dogs, and they're both incredibly happy. They enrich my life, and I do the same to theirs'. I don't want the state telling me I can't have dogs. That's a kind of liberal fascism that goes against the grain of this country's ethos.
There are dogs suffering in shelters, but there is suffering all around, everywhere you look. Orphan children, homeless people, cancer. If you start passing laws against everything, we'll wind up living in a bubble.
Find negative externalities and tax them if you want a better way of dealing with problems. Don't ban dog ownership.
That’s unfortunately a part of living in a society. We can’t always agree on what priorities are worth our limited resources. We’ve generally agreed children are a priority and choose to enforce those laws more often. For every person annoyed by bad dog owners, there’s somebody who annoyed by laws not being enforced against noise pollution, poorly parked cars, yard maintenance etc etc. My only suggestion is to get engaged to try and get them enforced if you feel it’s a major problem
And I still got a dog. Right before some unplanned surgeries. Now, I also totally believe the claimed personal health benefits. Can't stay in bed when the puppy needs to be walked. This dog probably saved my life.
We spend a lot of time at the dog park, so I see the cream of the dog owners. I try to not think too much about all the other dogs who aren't as lucky. I'll just start crying.
Did it ever tell you it was happy?
And do you have a substantial body of conversations with other cats to be able to analyse so you can tell when one claiming to be happy is instead stunted and warped and brainwashed into declaring it's love for it's cult leader?
Yes I know what they did in new Zealand but remember there were no indigenous predatory land mammals to replace there
It's not even clear to me that birds are a primary food source for domesticated outdoor cats. They might be hunting them just for sport.
This seems like a condemnation of hunting for sport to me.
I still don't see a condemnation at all. Other than the implication that sport is not constrained by hunger and therefor can have unbounded externalities, which again is not moral, it's a practical observation and concern for bird populations.
Maybe you could pinpoint further which part of the sentence you quoted brings in morality.
Yes, prioritize benefits & ROI.
Yes, cats kill their share of birds.
Yes, keeping cats indoors feels like recycling plastic (pointless).
But I still do it. Because I don't want to be part of the problem.
We make what improvements we can.
And no, you're kitty is not a "natural predator" rebalancing anything. It's a pet and as such should be kept under you're control.
Entitled "free roamer" cat owners are the worst - and breaking leash laws in just about every jurisdiction out there. I have zero problems trapping trespassing cats and turning them over to animal control. Not sure why people feel entitled to get a pass on this - it's BS.
Something like 2/3rds of domesticated cats are feral.
All told, cats kill > 1 billions birds in North America.
Like this article says, with so many factors and poor data collection, it's hard to quantify everything.
But please do your part. If your cat does go outside, please consider putting a bell on their collar.
Also, many people are allergic to cats. Some of them develop even serious health problems like anaphylaxis. Please restrict your cat strictly to your property.
Cats love the outdoors. It's evil to take that away from them. Not all cats even kill birds.
On the other anecdata, my parents have only had outdoor cats and every single one has made it past 5 - several past 10, one past 20. Of the 10 I can think of just now, only 1 died of "unnatural" causes (car).
There are appropriately 92 million cats in the US - so that is like 10 birds per cat - I've had a lot of outdoor access cats and most have never brought birds in, or like once or twice a year.
Do cats bring in only a tiny subset of things they catch, or are some cats killing far far more?
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On protecting birds, also be sure to keep dogs on a lead when birds are nesting, they can destroy nests in hedges and in the ground, or cause birds to abandon them. https://ww2.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/bird-and-wildlife...
If your pet cat is spayed/neutered, it should be fine to allow them outside. They will not contribute to the feral cat problem and in fact could help slightly reduce it.
See also:
75% decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas (2017)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15502074
Insect 'apocalypse' in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides (2019)
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-52199691
The local gov decided to pay to keep them fed instead of having a bunch of half-dead animals walking around on the ground when they get out I guess. Or harassing homes most likely.
It's weirdly common(ish) problem.
Sadly, it turns out that rodents really like to eat that kind of insulation. So if you have a car made after ~2000, you need to keep pests away from wherever you store it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-go-absolutely-insane-and-t...:
“Auto makers are building defenses against stone martens, a type of weasel that invades engines and eats the wiring
[…]
We only have data from those insurers that offer a weasel policy”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_marten#Car_damage:
“Since the mid-1970s, the beech marten has been known to occasionally cause damage to cars. Cars attacked by martens typically have cut tubes and cables. A beech marten can slice through the cables of a starter motor with just one bite. The reason for this is not fully known, as the damaged items are not eaten. There is, however, a seasonal peak in marten attacks on cars in spring, when young martens explore their surroundings more often and have yet to learn which items in their habitat are edible or not.[29] The fishoil often contained in the cables of cars from Japan may contribute to this”
If you are willing to kill the rats and mice instead of just drive them away somehow, then taking up shooting as an additional hobby might be worth considering.
I've ruled it out because I don't really want to kill them, and also in my feeding area there is no good spot to take a shot from where a miss would not potentially go somewhere I really do not want it to go.
This starts to look like cutting down the forest and then replantig lesser version of it because it feels not so cozy on plain field...
[0] http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-world-populati...
It makes me sad to think that 50-100 years from now most of the species we know and many more we don't will be extinct.
The only things left alive will be what we need to survive and whatever manages to carve a niche out of the blasted landscapes we leave in our wake.
Give it a shot if you care. Education isn't the problem, it's the will to sacrifice our comfort for a better world.
We are much better at consumption than nature is at adaptation.
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/less-than-a-thousand-remai...
Burden of proof is on you if you want to make a claim like that.
That sounds woefully inadequate information for something as complex as what this model is trying predict.
That's like predicting the weather from only a handful of temperature sensors, or doing patient studies with N=4.
A mass die offs of coral, which is currently happening, will decimate ocean ecosystems and have a cascading effect on the rest of the world.
People have been saying this for decades, its not new news. Its just inconvenient and impacts shareholders.
We have been accurately modeling climate change for over 50 years now.
Also, epidemiologist have been predicting a coronavirus outbreak specifically for about 10 years, and a larger global pandemic for about 100.
You can choose to ignore science if you want, but that doesn't mean people havent been warning us.
I predict the sun will run out of steam and we are all gonna die. Furthermore, some volcanos will erupt too.
And we have not been 'accurately predicting the climate for 50 years' : about 50 years ago, there were worries about a new ice age.
I feel recently it's been a long time since I came across examples of where nature is increased or restored. Every time it's about nature disappearing.
Bad news is reported far more often than good.
There are signs of the planet greening as a result of higher CO2, for instance.
That doesn't diminish the potential damage, but it's not all bad.
Its the rate of change, not the change itself that causes mass extinctions.
Which just goes to show that deadly radiation is better for the environment than the presence of humans.
Current trends show major ecological collapse within our lifetimes.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11989890/
But it doesn't mean it won't happen without a wake-up call. The answer is simple, just stop destroying what has caused unprecedented equilibrium in temperatures during the latest rise of civilization in the past 10k years.
I admire his drive, but I also believe it is futile.
Humankind has done nothing but expand and devour over its short history on this planet, nothing that we have done makes me think this trend will stop.
Saying humankind has done "nothing" is not only mistaken, but makes for poor conversation. Perhaps more people should take a page from Attenborough.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/dec/17/for-the-first-...
The only real hope the worlds ecosystems have is drastic and sudden reduction in human population, which won't be pleasant for anyone.
This was proved by the resurgence of nature in the areas surrounding Chernobyl. I've been a part of a coral conservation project in SEAsia for the last 15 years, and we have seen more recovery over the last year due to tourists being gone than ever before.
Unfortunately the boat captains who were ferrying snorkelers before have gone back to fishing the reefs, so that change was short lived. We are also beginning to see signs of a major bleaching event.
The long term impacts of COVID are going to see a relaxation of ecological protections worldwide, which I imagine will have a similar effect.
"More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered"
"The analysis, published in the journal Biological Conservation, says intensive agriculture is the main driver of the declines, particularly the heavy use of pesticides."
I don't personally worry about the collapse of the ecosystem as some major long term issue. Major extinction events have occurred in the past, and it portends a massive explosion of diversity as life adapts to the new ecosystem. In a few million years our AI ancestors will tend an amazing garden of native, artificial and synthetic hybrid life.
And if we don't make it... multicellular life will continue to flourish and evolve.
What leads you to believe this? I often see similar sentiments on this website. I don't understand it. Maybe I'm missing something.
High technology is fragile. As far as I can tell, it's nowhere close to self-sufficient. It's the pinnacle of a massive edifice whose foundation is biology: in particular non-human life. Kick that out and the whole thing collapses.
> And if we don't make it... multicellular life will continue to flourish and evolve.
This does seem reasonably likely. Life is resilient. Human life and human engineering, not so much.
I'm not sure if you grasp the concept of extinction: the permanent removal of species from the ecosystem. Mass extinctions don't "portend a massive explosion of diversity" they literally signal the end of diversity. Ecosystems take millions of years to recover as there are few or no species left that fill prior ecological niches to provide ecosystem services. Biodiversity is not the result of extinction, it's what happens between extinction events as millions upon millions of mutations build up viable species.
It's like cutting down all the trees in the forest and declaring "but in the long run, this will be good for the forest! Think of all the trees that will eventually grow here!"
https://i0.wp.com/mackaycartoons.net/wp-content/uploads/2020...
On a personal level, online calculators tell me I've reduced my footprint about 90 percent. More than the material change, I didn't expect it would improve my life so much -- saving money, time, increasing connection to family and control over my career, plus being invited to communities like food deserts who can benefit most from such transitions. I would bet most Americans could reduce about 70 or 80 percent with simple improvements they wish they did earlier. Most Silicon Valley types maybe 90 percent before any difficult decisions.
My podcast and nonprofit's missions are to help people realize they'll like the change. Everyone presents sustainability as a burden, chore, or sacrifice. In practice, it's the opposite, but no one tries so haven't experienced it. They think not flying means not working or seeing their family.
We're creating systemic change by leading well-known people to change, publicly so listeners have role models. Community influences people more than facts and figures, so we're focusing on people in everyone's communities.
Many opportunities for rewarding change.
This Sustainable Life: https://joshuaspodek.com/podcast
Here's a list of popular guests based on downloads: https://joshuaspodek.com/leadership-and-the-environment-top-... though I recommend the solo episodes of my reflections without guests, starting here: https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/solo-episodes-volume-15.
My three TEDx talks: https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx
My two cents...
Due to this pandemic, I'm finally eating the way I've always intended to. Beans, legumes, brown rices, chilis, stews, novel flours, baking.
I've dropped 30lbs, now close to my ideal weight. I'm also eating non-stop, so it's not due calorie restriction.
To maximize social distancing, and maybe reduce risk of food shortages, I've been buying bulk as much as possible.
Another unexpected benefit is my food waste is now super low.
For example, regenerate forests using Miyawaki's method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Miyawaki#Method_and_cond...
> The Miyawaki method of reconstitution of "indigenous forests by indigenous trees" produces a rich, dense and efficient protective pioneer forest in 20 to 30 years ... this method, if properly applied, quickly produces a multi-layered forest and according to him, a soil with a microbial and acari composition quickly approaching that of a normal primary forest.
And regenerative ecologically-harmonious agriculture, e.g.: "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A
Reversing desertification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening
Our future Garden Earth will need a lot of labor, investment.
I recently observed a couple dozen volunteers working on restoring some local woods (in a park). Removing rubbish, culling invasive species, restoring top soil, planting saplings, etc.
It was real work. I couldn't believe how small the targeted area was. Less than an acre.
Doing restoration, biomediation at scale would give a lot of people a lot of jobs. At this point in my life, I'd definitely do it for minimum wage and health insurance. My neighbor "retired" a few years ago, now does landscaping. He claims he's never been happier, more fit. He certainly looks it.
There was an article that went by here on HN not long ago that claimed that this is the year that humans and their livestock outweigh all other (wild) biomass. In other words, I think Garden Earth is today, eh?
And yeah, I agree with you that it's going to take a lot of work. Done well, regenerative agriculture is profitable, so that's great.
Some times I think that humanity is just a disease itself. Despite overwhelming evidence of our detrimental effects to this planet, we continue to plunge all of it's precious resources and while sitting on a pile of ashes. We ponder at the question of "why?"
I think it's wrong to even think about the fact that cats kill birds. That's between the cats and the birds, and even the fact that some humans own or feed some of those cats is irrelevant.
Not only that, did everyone forget all the humans that have birdfeeders and the even more that simply litter and leave edible garbage everywhere? (or in garbage bins for that matter)
Most of the problems brought up about either dogs or cats sound to me like the most sane and correct reaction which does the most good for everyone, is to simply be more tolerant of other people's pets as a fact of life, the same way we have to for their babies.
It's like the annoyance of a baby crying in some place like a restaurant or a plane. I agree, that is super annoying, if you've somehow managed to live too much of your life shielded from that annoyance. But really the problem is not the baby or the fact that a parent took the baby into a public shared space, it's that you are too much of a baby to tolerate it.
Intolerant selfish douchebags can sort of get away with making the argument that you don't need to go out to a restaurant with a baby, and can actually turn their intolerance into someone els's inconsideration. You could choose to stay home where I don't have to deal with your unsightly family, or just don't have any kids like I didn't, or just leave them with a babysitter etc etc.
But what about a plane? If you have a kid you simply can't travel?
But even the restaurant example has that same essense of unreasonable discrimination as the plane example.
I say people are forgetting that life and being a human is a bit messy and inconvenient once in a while, and it's fundamentally wrong to go quite so far towards trying to erase all the mild blemishes on your perfect clean unruffled existense when that requires telling other people they can't exist eny other ways except exactly the same sterile predicatble compartmented existence you like.
Not only do I say dogs and cats should be more tolerated as simply a recognized reasonable ingredient in life, and that it's not reasonable to expect to erase all trace of their messiness any more than it is to do so with human babies, I say it's also depressing that the universe of animal companions has been reduced to cats and dogs. How neat and tidy and boxed a web form with a cat or dog radio button.
For all the obvious obvious arguments, it's still just fundamentally not a good progression.
This all comes from someone who has neither pets nor kids. I am not arguing from the bias of having a kid or a pet myself that I want to be free to annoy everyone else with.
Perhaps in this case there were a lot of birds and not enough insects (food). So the birds die off. In a few years, with fewer birds(predators), the insects (prey) will return with a vengeance. In the midst of this new plenty, bird populations will rise dramatically, peak, and then die again. Rinse, repeat...
"Predator-prey cycles":
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/high-school-biology/hs-e...
This article reminds me of the recent years' of German beekeepers writing fretful papers on excessive insect die-offs. Worrywarts have long forecast ecological disaster. But such things have been going on for eons and started long before man was present.
Predator-prey cycles are of course neither new nor catastrophic, but the planetary extinction event we're in the midst of is definitely a catastrophe.
Maybe not yet to the same degree as the oxygenation of the atmosphere, but we're only just getting started.
We are part of the cycle, though. Do not simply assume that our ecocide will not come back to bite us hard.
Mankind already learned that lesson -- and it was a costly one: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03064220188002...
For example, some (not all) scientists think we have seen a large-scale decline in insect populations due to insecticides being used in ever-larger quantities in North America. If insectivorous bird species are dying of malnutrition, this could be a result of human insecticide (over)use.
As for the birds, you have to ask the same question: what makes you sure it's just Predator-prey?
Therefore it is contingent upon the presenter to provide at least some evidence that this is a "runaway" situation - a "die-off" rather than the usual alternatives, which happen all the time as Exmoor states in his initial post on this thread.
Instead we're shown a bunch of dead birds. That is followed by a chorus of webshits here providing subsequent "the sky is falling" lamentations, moaning and gnashing of teeth.