Common bird species in dramatic decline

A new Audubon study is one of the most comprehensive looks at bird-population trends in North America.

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Boston

New data show the populations of some of America's well-known birds in a tailspin, thanks to the one-two punch of habitat fragmentation and, increasingly, global warming.

From the heartland's whippoorwills and meadowlarks to the Northern bobwhite and common terns of the nation's coasts, 20 common bird species tracked by the National Audubon Society have seen their numbers fall 54 percent overall since 1967, with some down about 80 percent, the group reported Thursday.

Most of the trouble lies with loss of bird habitat, and has for decades, due to expanding agriculture and suburban development. The Rufous hummingbird's population has fallen 58 percent due to logging and development in its Pacific Northwest breeding range - and in its winter range in Mexico. The same thing has happened to whipporwills, whose numbers are down 57 percent due to loss of their forest habitat. At the same time, scientists say changes in migration patterns due to global warming are emerging, too.

"Habitat loss is still the major concern," says Greg Butcher, Audubon's bird conservation director in an interview. "But we're also seeing increasing impact from large-scale problems like global warming." read on >>

http://www.csmonitor.com:80/2007/0615/p02s03-usgn.htm

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Accredited member of the American Sanctuary Association.

Peace River Refuge & Ranch is a nonprofit exotic animal sanctuary, fully licensed and accredited by the American Sanctuary Association (ASA) and Member Society of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). We are fully licensed by the State of Florida, USDA, US Fish & Wildlife.

The sanctuary is dedicated to the lifetime care of abused, neglected, confiscated or unwanted exotic animals to prevent them from being destroyed. The animals that we rescue range from big cats such as tigers, cougars and leopards to wolves, bears, primates, smaller cats and more.  read on >>

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"An Inconvenient Truth"
with Al Gore

A definite "wake up" film. My kids, ages 4 through 21, all watched with my husband and me. The message, we felt, was of hope. We can turn this around. Each one of us can make simple, daily choices that can help turn this global crisis around.

We were all impressed with Al Gore's presentation - incorporating urgency, compassion, hope and even humor.

I am sure there was nothing in the film we weren't aware of on some level, but seeing it all put together in layman's terms will be beneficial in reaching the masses. - Shirley Harshenin

About the Film

Global warming threatens extinctions: report

Reuters
April 10, 2006

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades, a study said on Tuesday.

"Global warming ranks among the most serious threats to the planet's biodiversity and, under some scenarios, may rival or exceed that due to deforestation," according to the study in the journal Conservation Biology.

"This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet," said Jay Malcolm, an assistant forestry professor at the University of Toronto and a lead author of the study with scientists in the United States and Australia.

Last month, a UN study said humans were responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and urged unprecedented extra efforts to reach a UN target of slowing the rate of losses by 2010.

Scientists disagree about how far global warming is to blame compared with other human threats such as deforestation, pollution and the introduction of alien species to new habitats.

The new study looked at 25 "hotspots" -- areas that contain a big concentration of plants and animals -- and projected that 11.6 percent of all species, with a range from 1-43 percent, could be driven to extinction if levels of heat trapping-gases in the atmosphere were to keep rising in the next 100 years.

The range would mean the loss of thousands, or tens of thousands, of species. The report gave a wide range because of uncertainties, for instance, about the ability of animals or plants to move toward the poles if the climate warmed.

"Areas particularly vulnerable to climate change include the tropical Andes, the Cape Floristic region (on the tip of South Africa), southwest Australia, and the Atlantic forests of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina," it said.

NO ESCAPE

Species in many of these regions have limited escape routes. Rare plants, antelopes, tortoises or birds found only on the southern tip of Africa, for instance, cannot move south because the nearest land is thousands of miles away in Antarctica.

The scientists said their study broadly backed the findings of a 2004 report in the journal Nature that suggested global warming could commit a quarter of the world's species to extinction by 2050. No one knows how many species are on earth, with estimates ranging from 5-100 million.

"It isn't just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about any more," said Lee Hannah, co-author of the study and senior fellow for climate change at Conservation International in the United States.

"We used a completely different set of methods (from the Nature study) and came up with similar results. All the evidence shows that there is a very serious problem," he said.

Global warming is widely blamed on rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere linked to emissions of gases from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants.

The UN's Kyoto Protocol obliges about 40 nations to cut emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

President George W. Bush pulled the United States out in 2001, arguing that Kyoto was too costly and wrongly excluded poor nations. Bush instead favors big investments in new technology to break what he has called a U.S. addiction to oil.

today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx

This story ran on Reuters in April....but is no longer on their site. Why would it be removed? SEE HERE.

It was found on THIS SITE.

See AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - Your only planet's life depends on it.

www.ClimateCrisis.org www.StopGlobalWarming.org