SAN FRANCISCO, 18 January – Three in five or, almost 7000 bird species are in steep decline, many from logging native forests. One in eight kinds of birds are facing near-term extinction. Human health, too, is in dire jeopardy. Poisons in freshwater, fossil fuel smog and transnational organised crime are levelling earthly life.
Lest we forget that combusting fossil fuels, wood pellets and palm oil has brought agony and starvation to four million Common Murres, forced Caspian Terns to mate and lay eggs 1700 kilometres farther north than the species has ever been seen before and driven Snowy Owls extinct in Sweden. Elsewhere across the Arctic tundra, this iconic warm-blooded vertebrate is vanishing. It’s simply too hot.
Birds play a pivotal role in ecological systems worldwide. Raptors, or, top-level birds of prey (Eagles, Hawks, Falcons, Owls, Kites, Harriers, Osprey, Vultures, others) strengthen system fitness by removing old, sick and weak prey. Essentially, they keep disease outbreaks from becoming epidemics. Habitat destruction, global heating, transnational organised crime and nerve poisons have lambasted raptors. Consequently, the tundra, alpines, grasslands, woodlands, rivers, and shorelines, as well as native forests are ill.
Many birds pollinate: apples, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, melons, peaches, potatoes, vanilla, almonds, coffee, chocolate and more – our food supply.
Hideous nerve poisons called neonicotinoids applied to canolas, rapeseeds and sunflowers (the oilseeds), potatoes, soybeans, citrus, others and American building products, are deadly for bird populations.
For example, almost 90 per cent of Western Canadian wetlands are coursing with neonicotinoids from oilseeds. As a result, bird species living on the Canadian grasslands habitat have nosedived by 90 per cent. For the record, there are over 1000 different neonicotinoids available around the globe. Neonicotinoids are also annihilating bee, hoverfly, moth and butterfly populations, pollinators for 300,000 kinds of flowering plants, including many of our food crops.
Birds depend upon insects as their food source. Bird populations are in a tailspin form the collateral damage of widespread use of neonicotinoids and other deleterious agricultural chemicals that have destroyed insect populations. No insects, no birds.
Birds are tremendous insectivores and seed disseminators. Across the Western North American mountains and highland communities, Clark’s Nutcrackers are specially adapted to feed and cache Pinyon, Limber, Whitebark, Rocky Mountain and Great Basin Bristlecone Pine seeds. Forgotten caches become breathtaking woodland and subalpine native forests.
Global heating has removed a natural insect limitation, a lethal freezing barrier. So, trillions of tree-killing bark beetles have invaded and decimated snow-Pine forests across the subcontinent. Subsequently, Clark’s are feeding and caching at lower elevations on different Pine species.
Hence, native forest regeneration across the western mountains and highlands is faltering with limited seed sources and fewer tree planters, Clark’s. Moreover, beetle-killed mountain carbon storehouses are no longer sinks that drawdown carbon dioxide and store it as wood. By contrast, dead forests have become sources adding to escalating greenhouse gases.
Springtime is occurring earlier. Higher than normal temperatures are sublimating snowpacks (snow to water vapour). Less snow is melting (snow to water). In addition, mountain soils are missing native forest tree roots that would otherwise regulate the prolonged pulse of meltwater downslope.
Instead, heat domes, persistent drought, climate firestorms, synchronised regional bark beetle epidemics and billions of dead mountain trees have translated into less meltwater and drier soils.
Compounding matters, the demand for reservoir and aquifer water is outstripping the overheated climate’s supply. Snow droughts are increasing. Freshwater is disappearing at a terrifying rate.
Incidentally, the spring mountain flush of meltwater is of paramount importance to top up aquifers and reservoirs, which irrigate western breadbaskets that feed America, Canada and the world.
Escalated Plundering
The insatiable demand for wild birds is stoking their near-term extinction while transnational organised plunderers are making a killing. About 4000 tropical bird species are caught and sold into the burgeoning live and dead animal trade black market.
Tropical birds are the curators of Rainforest diversity, especially ensuring a wide assortment of tree species – outstanding carbon storehouses. Snatching birds across the Indomalaya and Amazon Rainforests have depleted tree species diversity thereby bleeding the carbon vaults. Organised crime is laying waste to Mother’s shield and antidote to global heating, Rainforests.
Other Global North criminals are stealing hundreds of prized British Falcons in yet another devastating black market trade. Depraved nouveau riche Middle Easterners enslave these stolen raptors, forcing them into the lucrative racing and breeding racket.
If all that doesn’t make you weep, this certainly will: Seabird populations have plunged over 70 per cent. Global heating, overfishing, 1.7 billion hooks on 21 million kilometres of longlines, oil spills and chemicals are inflicting agony and mass death.
Seabirds are an excellent indicator of the health of marine ecosystems. If the oceans are sick and depleted, then humans are sick and failing.
Sick Oceans, Sick People
Oh boy, that rings true! People of the world too are agonising from poisons, heat and a $750bn annual junk food industry. Two point eight billion humans cannot afford a healthy diet. In the world’s wealthiest country, the U.S., 16 million children live in food-insecure households. Shockingly, the Trump administration refuses to feed struggling American families.
And, more than 17 million Americans in 41 states are exposed to the hazardous industrial chemical trichloroethylene, or TCE, in polluted drinking water. TCEs are lethal. TCEs are also linked to Parkinson’s Disease, which afflicts 90,000 Americans annually.
Poisons from the air and soil are equally wreaking havoc across the United States and the world.
Since the 1990s, the number of Americans with chronic diseases has ballooned by more than 75 per cent of adults, or 194 million people, so says the CDC. Autism, insulin resistance and autoimmune diagnoses have reached epidemic proportions. The incidence of cancer in people under 50 is soaring around the globe.
What we do to Mother Earth’s environment, freshwater and the animals, including consuming mountains of illicit and harmful drugs has manifested into a planetary catastrophe. This much we know: genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
Only 1 cent of the roughly 350,000 chemicals in the U.S. in use have been tested. Millions of people are exposed to paraquat, chloropyrifos, rotenone, maneb and 2, 4-D. Those gruesome poisons are also linked to Parkinson’s.
Parkinson’s attacks the substantia nigra, a small dark-tinged portion of the brain, that regulates dopamine, the feel-good hormone that is also essential for motor skills coordination.
People living close to golf courses that drink the groundwater, be forewarned. Where does your freshwater originate? Don’t know? Make it your business to find out.
Restrict, if not obviate ultra-processed foods. Eat plant-based whole foods. Support local farmers. Refuse to use chemicals in your yard.
Plant a couple food-bearing trees. Grow your own food in pots, raised beds or Mother Earth’s soil. Start an earthworm farm, vermiculture. Worm cats boost soil fertility, moisture retention, microorganism diversity and carbon storage capacity.
Worms also feed birds. Birds sing songs that make us feel good. When we feel good, we are curious. Curiosity fosters joy. Birds connect us to nature.
We are nature. Nature nourishes us. Nature heals us, especially old-growth native forests. Repair nature in your yard, community, shire, county, state or province.
It all starts with you being kind and rolling up your sleeves to revitalise habitat and protect our brothers and sisters, the animals.
Agitate. Disrupt. Defend.
Reese Halter is a bees/trees/seas defender.
Unearthly Wails is a special edition, a collection of poetry
illustrated by renowned Ojibwa artist Terry McCue.
Email: HalterBooks@gmail.com to order
