Bird species decline...........
Charlie
Is this the warning against DDT that Peregrine Falcons highlighted, and
the reason coal miners took canaries underground?
Delegated to a human interest story by the television media - was the
result of yet another study that confirms that all Australian states
are suffering from a bird number decline over all species. Victoria
apparently has the most birds lost, a number of 150,000 birds is
suggested and in any-ones language, that's a lot of birds
vanishing/perishing. Several factors are being blamed, from feral
animal predation to climate change. It's really depressing, and
certainly worrying for many people. Scientists are putting out these
statistics.
I wonder how accurate these statistics are really? Did all the people
of Australia, or even all the bird watchers of the country all go out
on the one day and count the number of birds and the species,
especially those that travel round quite a bit? Did the counters move
into the forest, bush and not just the backyards and parks to take the
census? Within even a week, though one day would have been more
accurate? Is the number of birds lost a guess?
There are many problems everywhere. The destruction of life forms, as
well dignity and quality of life for human beings that are being
implemented by science. It's all physical stuff that science is working
on to “improve the world”, without thinking or considering the physical
effects upon all species of the planet and the psychological impacts on
all living things including human individuals and society. A surge to
show just how clever science is, but never extrapolate effect or infect
any further is the way of the today.
Science sits on the fence, it's a perpetrator and whistle blower at the
same time. It's creations have been to blame for much of the
detrimental affects, upon all life on earth and life of the planet
itself which it keeps warning us about, but does nothing to curb. While
rushing headlong into trying to show what it can do, seriously trying
to be, if not god, then at least competing at that level.
Here at home we have noticed that bird numbers have declined, but we
can't say that this is the case every year, and how many years
constitute a normal cycle; each year being different. The wood ducks
were a case in point a few years ago. Farmers many hundreds of
kilometre's down the line were demanding that duck hunting season be
opened up, even extended because there was a “plague” of wood ducks.
The hunting lobby straight away jumped on this “evidence” to further
it's killing cause. The member of state parliament for our area said
that he would lobby the government to do just what the shooters and
farmers were requested.
At the same time the fires were biting at our boundary and the
boundaries of other properties, and where we had a couple of hundred
wood ducks all year round, and some usually successfully breeding when
the season came round. Now there were none, and we knew other places
the same. The ducks had moved away from the constant smoke and threat
of flames and waterless dams, being used to fight the fires. So others,
who now had these water fowl as visitors said there was a “plague” of
ducks, which were just birds looking for a safer less busy place to
sojourn. Where there was water, smokeless air and fireless forest and
pasture. The member of parliament conceded that this was correct when I
explained it to him in a letter, and just asked the government to give
some of the farmers who were experiencing the influx of birds
permission to cull some. This didn't work of course. Because no one
monitored the amount being “culled”. Now we are lucky to see 8 or 9
pair of wood ducks here at any one time and only seen one clutch of
hatchlings this much better breeding season.
The loss of the passenger pigeon to North America is an example of this
crazy miscalculation. Because hunters said there were so many that they
would never be depleted, this species is now extinct. We may think that
the species we loose are of no great consequence, but we don't know,
even though science might declare it knows one way or another. Human
beings have a great responsibility to preserve, so that at some stage,
some human generation, if it survives, will have a better understanding
of how it all really works. The intrinsic value of species other than
human is not appreciated. The new, great, exciting frontier is not out
there in space, it is within. It is to preserve by curtailing our
excesses and to get humans to cooperate rather than squabble and fight.
When will we realise this? Questions, questions and more questions
leading us to the question which will accurately engage the problem, if
we can identify it.
So what do we do, we, the disenfranchised voices in the wilderness? We
just keep hammering away at the wall and hope one day a crack, right
through to the other side will appear. That will be the start and then
there will still be a long way to go. We have to bloody that wall with
the impact from our hands, so it's stained and marks the spot. So our
children and their children will know where they must strike, and hope
that there will still be wild creatures to protect.
Be well,
Charlie
--
Registered Linux User:- 329524
.....................................................
There is no remedy for love than to love more. ........Henry David
Thoreau
.....................................................
Debian GNU/Linux - just the best way to create magic