dead birds
With birds dropping from the sky in America and Europe, massive fish deaths in the US and thousands of dead crabs in the UK wildlife seems to be having a tough time recently. Should all these massive and sudden die offs raise concerns about our environment?
The reality is that mass dies offs like these happen on very regular occasions and it’s only been because this time it has been picked up by the mass media that we are noticing them much more. It’s only been various weird and wonderful web sites and commentators that have connected them all up to produce doomsday scenarios. Federal records in the US shows tat these types of mass dies offs occur in the states on average every other day. They are totally unrelated and happen usually for natural reasons.
“They generally fly under the radar,” said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
The U.S. Geological Survey‘s National Wildlife Health Center has been logging and tracking mass deaths of birds, fish and other animals since the 1970′s. As wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White says, sometimes it’s diseases, sometimes it’s pollution, sometimes it’s just a mystery. Over the last 9 months the National Wildlife Health Center has logged 95 major mass die off and it believes that figure is greatly underestimated. some of the instances include:
- 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys
- 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota
- 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho
- 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas
- the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California
While 3,000 blackbirds falling out of the sky in Arkansas seems to be extreme there has been much bigger die offs in the past. In Canada over 100,000 geese suddenly died of botulism in the summer of 1996.
The 163 mass die of events reported each year to the federal government is thought to be a great underestimation of the actual number of events. “Depending on the species, these things don’t even get reported,” White said.
So what events can cause the mass die off of birds; one of the more noticeable die off events. There are many reasons but one of the major ones connected with the die offs is the weather and in particular cold and wet weather. Parasites and disease can also weaken populations causing sudden and mass deaths. Pollution plays a part and in the Arkansas blackbird case people are postulating that fireworks could have been a cause of their demise.
If these mass die offs have been happening through out time and are a common natural occurrence why is there all the publicity and discussion this time? World leading Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has an answer for this – the internet.
As he points out all this instant communication in the hands of everyone and the widespread use of mobile phones means that any incident is quickly publicized and people can join up dots which are not there.
“This instant and global communication, it’s just a human instinct to read mystery and portents of dangers and wondrous things in events that are unusual,” Wilson told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Not to worry, these are not portents that the world is about to come to an end.”
He points out that this ability to just take quick pictures of incidents and have them instantly published to sites like Twitter and Facebook can produce a skewed view of what is happening in the world. More worrying is that the attention these quickly occurring events get can detract from the real dangers of the slow deaths of species heading for extinction.
