2010 State of the Birds Report Released Today – Confirms that Climate Change is a New and Serious Threat to Birds
Posted March 11, 2010 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
Today the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Cornell Lab and many others released the second annual report letting us know how birds are doing in the United States. The report focused on impacts of climate change and it is no surprise that these are already being felt in every habitat. But the harm is especially seen among birds that cannot easily move as the climate in their ecosystem changes. For example, birds that live on islands, such as Hawaiian birds, are facing multiple threats including from disease and invasive species as their native habitat’s climate changes. Just last year, an article in Science Daily, reported that climate change had already caused reduction of Hawaiian bird species such as the honeycreeper through disease. Earlier this week, two Hawaiian honeycreeper birds, the akeke’e and the akikiki were added to the U.S. endangered species list.
Climate change is already changing the timing of birds’ life cycles. The impact of climate change on the distribution and abundance of many species is already widespread and even greater changes are predicted for the future. Many seasonal biological phenomena such as plant growth, flowering, animal reproduction and migration depend on the temperature. As the globe warms, birds will shift both their ranges and their densities. Different birds will change in various ways in reaction to climate change and that will cause a restructuring of communities and of critical predator-prey interactions. Approximately 11 percent of the world’s bird species are at risk and as many as 200 of these may disappear in the next 20 years.
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Comments
Steven Douglas — Mar 13 2010 06:45 PM
So human produced CO2, which translated to climate change, which then translated into to smaller average bird sizes in just FIFTY YEARS? That kind of extrapolation is, in a word, bizarre, regardless how typical.
I have a much better theory as to why some birds are a bit (less than 2%) smaller on average. It has an anthropogenic causal mechanism as well, could have a dramatic effect over fifty years, and is FAR more plausible: CATS.
A senior scientist at Audubon estimates that over a billion birds are killed by domestic cats alone each year in the US. That alone (which is an anthropogenic influence on the environment) could account for observed (2% on average, not much) decrease in average size (in SOME species), given that larger birds would have a more difficult time avoiding predators than smaller birds, leaving more of the smaller birds alive to continue breeding.
But no, somehow a small change anywhere is presumed not only to be caused by climate change (everywhere), but is also somehow "a serious threat".
Florence Stanley — Mar 13 2010 10:26 PM
It is not only cats that kill birds but progress. Every time we clear trees fot housing, shopping centers and roads we kill wildlife.