We've underrated what these birds can do: the secret life of Skomer’s guillemots | Hacker News Reader

We've underrated what these birds can do: the secret life of Skomer’s guillemots

theguardian.com

I've only seen pigeon guillemots, but I am in love with them. They have so much spunk and personality. They appear to be very playful too, they do aerial acrobatic competitions, perform splashy takedowns in exaggerated comic fashion, their courtship displays are a circling ballet with offerings of fish. They even seem to "laugh" riotously as a group when something outrageous happens. Guillemots aren't flashy but they are charming as all heck for patient birdwatchers.

For anyone curious to learn more about the incredible lives of seabirds I can highly recommend the book "The Seabird's Cry" by Adam Nicholson. Poignant and poetic, with each chapter covering a different species, their amazing adaptations, and more often than not the new challenges facing their survival thanks to human activities.

For those who really care about nature and biodiversity, adopting a vegan lifestyle is a clear choice.

> Globally, seabird numbers have fallen by 70% since the 1950s, and in northern Britain most seabird populations have had significant declines in recent years.

> It doesn’t look great for any wildlife. Human-made factors are eating into our natural ecology, it’s just so sad

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2216573120

Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe

https://www.iucn.org/content/worrying-declines-worlds-seabir...

The review reveals that seabirds are now more threatened than any other group of birds. Of the 346 seabird species, 97 (28%) are globally threatened, and a further 10% are listed as Near Threatened. Almost half of all seabird species are known or suspected to be experiencing population declines. The albatross family is especially imperiled, with 17 of the 22 species currently threatened with extinction.

At sea, commercial fisheries have depleted fish stocks, an important food source for seabirds, and caused the death of innumerable seabirds through accidental bycatch. On land, the introduction of invasive species has destroyed many breeding colonies.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/sep/05/d...

Between 1950 and 2010, globally monitored populations plummeted by 70%. In the UK alone, nesting seabirds have declined by 30% since 2001. Seabirds are now counted as one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world.

Their numbers have been cut down by invasive species, overfishing, entanglements in fishing gear (bycatch), plastic pollution, oil spills and decades of habitat destruction.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/seabird-...

Lost at Sea: Why the Birds You Don’t See Are Fading Away

The problem was the indiscriminate fishing method known as gillnetting. Hauling a huge net to the surface of the ocean sweeps up not only the target fish but also porpoises, otters, turtles, and diving seabirds. Today at least 400,000 seabirds are killed worldwide every year in gill nets—murres and puffins and diving ducks in northern waters, penguins and diving petrels off the coast of South America. The annual toll on murres alone may equal the 146,000 killed in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

I don't see the connection between adopting a vegan lifestyle and caring about biodiversity. You yourself point out that farmland practices are driving bird population decline, but vegans eat food that is produced on farms. I follow a carnivore diet because I think it is best for the nature and biodiversity -- I avoid eating plants that have been sprayed with pesticides that kill the bugs that the birds eat.

Livestock takes up around 80% of agricultural land around the world, yet produces only 20% of the world's supply of calories: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

It's pretty wild. Farmed animals are very inefficient to eat, and we could actually rewild a lot of agricultural land and still have a surplus of food for people to eat if they ate plants instead.

The spraying of crops that you're concerned about is more of a problem for the crops that are fed to livestock, as well. While you aren't eating those crops directly, they cover so much land and require such a staggering amount of treatment. You're effectively financing that process by purchasing meat.

Remember, every kilo of beef you eat required 6–10 kilos of feed (Feed conversion ratios differ for other livestock, but none are efficient. And if you say "well, chickens are way more efficient", I'd suggest looking into how factory farming of chicken is a behemoth disease vector that threatens all kinds of biodiversity, including you). Whether humans would eat that feed or not, these are crops grown for livestock and a non-trivial amount of crops grown could be swapped out for human-suitable crops. Take for example grains and legumes fed to cows, pigs, and chickens; these are also human foods, and they only need to be cultivated to different standards to make it to grocery shelves.

Your understanding of what's best for nature and biodiversity is not supported by our best science or any available evidence that I'm aware of. We know that grazing depletes land more than leaving it alone; there is no strong evidence for real "restorative grazing" on any meaningful scale. We know that partitioning vast amounts of agricultural land to feed livestock depletes our water supply too quickly, which harms wildlife immensely. We know that the inefficiencies of factory farming requires funnelling vast amounts of crops through livestock, which requires vast amounts of land which often leads to nitrogen and phosphorous rich runoff in watersheds. This also leads to depleted soils, soil erosion, dramatically reduced soil biodiversity, reduced retention of rainfall, and the list goes on. Animal agriculture is antithetical to biodiversity and being stewards of nature.

> Livestock takes up around 80% of agricultural land around the world

Note that this also includes land used to grow food for animals. So if you drive past a field of wheat, there's a high chance it's going to end up eaten by a cow.

Your general point is right, but cows are fed on corn and soybeans, not wheat to nearly the same degree.

> Livestock takes up around 80% of agricultural land around the world, yet produces only 20% of the world's supply of calories: https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Is this ratio particularly bad? How does this number (4x the land per calorie compared to the agricultural average) compare for, say, broccoli or spinach? My intuition is that 4x is pretty good for anything but grains and perhaps tubers... but I wouldn't know how to start finding evidence one way or the other. Maybe grapes and other densely-growing high-calorie-density fruit are up there with grains?

If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-per-kg-poore

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore

I suspect we'd increase population to match production capacity. Just like every other time we've had an increase in effective resource production, we just increase consumption to match.

That would arguably still be better for the planet. Plant agriculture is lower-impact and poses far less threat to biodiversity and the human species via disease vectors.

Take for example that lettuce is a leading cause of food-born illness. It's actually because there's poop from animals on it, and it almost always comes from agricultural animals with the intent of it functioning as fertilizer. Without that factor, plants would be far safer.

There isn't much about animal ag that makes good sense apart from "it tastes good".

When you’re discussing a limited resource like arable land, 4x is absolutely crazy. We can’t come anywhere close to making 4x sustainable or scalable for the global population.

The meat you eat took far more farmed plants to grow than you would have required if you ate the plants instead.

Perhaps, but I would prefer to live a healthy life rather than cripple myself with diabetes and disease. Humans are not grazing animals with four stomachs like cattle.

Avoid windmills too.

I read this was faulty science since no one had controlled for how many birds die when there's no windmill in the same place.

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