Bay Area Bird Blog

Over the past few days I’ve been catching up on some New Yorkers that arrived while I was on vacation.  One of them has a long article about the illegal slaughter of literally millions of songbirds annually in Mediterranean countries, and the fruitless efforts to fight it.  Some places have an entrenched culture of killing birds, mostly for sport  – Malta, Cyprus, and Italy are specifically named, but there’s no claim that they’re the only ones — to the extent that the authorities won’t even try to enforce the laws. (In this regard, I’m reminded of dog laws in California parks).

And then last night I read an article about overfishing.  The article implies that it’s only recently been realized that fish populations everywhere are declining, the catch in almost all established fisheries is declining in spite of more sophisticated fishing gear, and that many former “staple” species, like North Atlantic cod, have been reduced to economic and ecological irrelevance.  Actually those facts were recognized by a lot of people years ago — for instance, the book “The Empty Ocean” came out in 2003 — but perhaps the article is right that they’re not widely known by the public.

And the San Francisco Board of Supervisors just approved an enormously expensive bridge right through a wetlands that Golden Gate Audubon has been restoring, to save 2 minutes of travel time for a small number of drivers.

And, of course, there’s the oil disaster in the Gulf, the failure of any climate bill in the Senate this year…it’s been a depressing couple of days of news.

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The New York Times reports that “The Interior Department said Friday that the greater sage grouse, a dweller of the high plains of the American West, was facing extinction but would not be designated an endangered species for now.”  It goes on to say “Residential building and energy development have shrunk the sage grouse habitat over the past several decades, causing its population in 11 Western states to dwindle from an estimated 16 million 100 years ago to 200,000 to 500,000 today.”  That means it’s down to about 3% of its historical numbers, and falling fast.  And yet, still no federal protection.

I find it very sad that people don’t care more about things like this.  Here’s a quote from Jason Chaffetz, a U.S. House representative from Utah: ““The only good place for a sage grouse to be listed is on the menu of a French bistro,” he said recently. “It does not deserve federal protection, period.”  To be indifferent — or, in this case, happy — about the prospects of the extinction of a charismatic species…well, it makes me sad and angry that there are people like this at all, much less serving in Congress.

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This is really sad.  The City of Berkeley, and the Golden Gate Audubon Society, have been working really hard to preserve their tiny remaining population of burrowing owls (three in Cesar Chavez Park, two in the adjacent Eastshore State Park).  At the same time, over in Antioch, a developer is “evicting” burrowing owls (by installing one-way, outward-only gates on their burrows) in preparation to fumigating to kill all of the ground squirrels there, to make way for a big housing development.  Read more about it at “the birder’s report”.  At the least, there should be some kind of required mitigation to try to compensate for the loss of habitat for these birds, which are a “species of special concern” of the State of California because of rapid population decline. Please write to John McCamman the director of the California Department of Fish and Game, with a cc to Regional Director Chuck Armor askbdr@dfg.ca.gov.  At this point they are not going to stop the project but it may not be too late for them to require mitigations; also, it is very important that they know that people out here in the real world notice and care when they drop the ball like this.

[Note added 1/5/09: I just got a request from the Department of Fish and Game, to remove the name and contact information of the DFG’s local representative, Susan Gilmore.  As you can see here, I have removed the contact info but not the name; people who make important decisions should be accountable for them. But there’s no point overwhelming her with messages if she’s not going to read them or is not supposed to read or respond to them, and I assume that’s the case here.]

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After decades of neglect, and refusal (by state and federal government, over many years) to create a species recovery plan as required by the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. jaguar population had long ago fallen to nearly negligible levels. Now the last U.S. jaguar, “Macho B”, is dead. The story of his death is sad, but it’s the loss of the whole species that is tragic. Perhaps someday jaguars can be imported from Mexico (as wolves have been imported from Canada) to re-establish this magnificent species in the U.S.

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Read the whole article at BBC Online, but here’s the gist of it:

The populations of the world’s common birds are declining as a result of continued habitat loss, a global assessment has warned.

The survey by BirdLife International found that 45% of Europe’s common birds had seen numbers fall, as had more than 80% of Australia’s wading species. 

The study’s authors said governments were failing to fund their promises to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

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Back in January, I blogged about how and why the south Asian white-backed vulture is on its way to extinction: a medicine called diclofenac, given to cows in India, is so toxic to vultures that a few bites from a dead cow will kill the vulture.  In just a few years, vultures have gone from ubiquitous to nearly extinct.  Some scientists have started captive breeding programs to save the species, in the hope of releasing them to the wild in the future. (Diclofenac is officially banned but is still being made and used).  

Unfortunately, a new study, reported in ScienceDaily, says the genetic diversity in the captive birds may not be enough.  They need to catch more birds. 

The Science Daily article says:

While the death of an unattractive bird that scavenges for a living may not sound like a great loss, vultures have important cultural and religious significance in south Asia. The ancient Parsi religion holds earth, fire and water sacred, and to avoid contaminating them, the Parsis dispose of their dead by placing them on “Towers of Silence,” where vultures consume the remains. In addition, the vulture saint Jatayu is an important figure in Hindu religion. The absence of vultures poses a direct threat to public health as well, as uneaten livestock carcasses provide breeding grounds for bacteria and attract feral dogs, which may spread rabies and other diseases.

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ScienceDaily has an interesting, though depressing, article about the effect of invasive, non-native snakes on the ecosystem of the island of Guam.  As the article says, “In the last 60 years, brown tree snakes have become the embodiment of the bad things that can happen when invasive species are introduced in places where they have few predators. Unchecked for many years, the snakes caused the extinction of nearly every native bird species on the Pacific island of Guam.”  Now researchers at the University of Washington have looked beyond snakes: without birds to eat and disperse the seeds of trees, the forests are being altered too.  

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Way back in January, in one of the first posts on this blog, I posted about the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) “Big Year.”  The idea is to see as many of the GGNRA’s federally listed (”threatened” or “endangered”) species as possible, and to perform some action to protect or help the ones that you see.  As I mentioned in January,

GGNRA has more federally listed endangered species than any other mainland unit of the National Park Service.  Brent Plater [Big Year organizer] was flabbergasted (so am I).   More than Yellowstone, with its wolves and grizzlies?  Yep.  More than the big parks of the Pacific Northwest, with their spotted owls?  Yep.  The only U.S.  parks with more federally listed threatened or endangered species are on islands: Hawaii, and the Channel Islands of Southern California.  We’ve got 33 listed species here (”listed” means listed as “threatened” or “endangered” under the federal endangered species act).  This is not something to be proud of.  

Well, I’m sorry to admit that I haven’t done very much vis-a-vis the Big Year.  I did see the Western Snowy Plover, and I’ve done my share of lobbying to help protect endangered species in general…but as far as the Big Year itself, eh, I haven’t done so much.  If you’re in the same boat, there’s an opportunity for you this weekend to jump-start things on both the see-a-species front and the take-action front:

Sat, July 26, 3 p.m.: Celebrate the return of Western Snowy Plovers to the GGNRA by participating in a beach cleanup and outreach day at Ocean Beach! While there, complete your Big Year Action Item by asking dog owners to keep ‘em on a leash in Plover habitat! Location: Ocean Beach, Stairwell 17.

That’s this Saturday. Why not come lend a hand?

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