Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Living in a world without songbirds
From the RoundTable blog
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Alwyn Moss
Moss, of Blacksburg, is a member of the Toms Creek Basin Vision Group.
The magnitude of changes affecting the natural world hit me particularly hard when I learned recently that the songbirds of the world are struggling for survival. While I am not a birder, I take great joy in seeing and hearing our avian relatives here in Southwest Virginia whose lives enrich my own in so many ways. The news that many species are vanishing at a rate of 5 percent to 10 percent yearly brought tears to my eyes.
Some species once common in Southwest Virginia -- the eastern meadowlark, the evening grosbeak, the northern bobwhite, the field sparrow -- have declined 74 percent to 82 percent since 1967. Kingbirds, Kentucky warblers and the wood thrush are of great concern, as are many more neotropical migratory species who find problems at both ends of their long flights.
Various causes are cited for plunging numbers: pesticides, light pollution, disease, roadkill, outside cats, predator birds, but almost all scientists agree the major factor is loss of habitat.
Despite current economic difficulties, pressures for growth remain strong with tens of thousands of acres being developed each day in this country, altering the not-long-ago rural character of the towns and countryside in our own region. Yet the new emphasis on "green" initiatives and alternatives here do not seem to include preserving thousands of acres that were in fact green. Meanwhile, the silent costs in terms of birds and wildlife mount daily with little awareness of how these losses will affect our lives in the coming decades.
We live in a critical and defining moment in human and Earth history, but one that I believe offers us an opportunity to rethink our way of living and our relationship to nature. Simply patching up our sick economy with its focus on growth and consumerism is no solution because it ignores the fact that we cannot have prosperity on a planet whose resources are being drained by unlimited exploitation of its essential resources.
Such an economy, fundamentally out of sync with the reality of the way the Earth works, can only lead in time to a far more serious economic crisis.
The Earth is weary. Our oceans have become highways for huge container ships, factory fishing vessels, warships and all manner of commercial activities and recipients of their wastes. Lands, forests and fields yield to the mass application of clear-cuts and chemicals. Cities grow, engulfing formerly rich and fertile places. Time is short. Maybe it is time to take a breath, to observe a new sabbath.
The idea of a moratorium has a long history. God, we are told, rested on the seventh day and commanded humanity to do the same for themselves, their animals and lands. This might be the wisest action we could take now.
I propose we ask our local governments to declare a moratorium on all development not essential for health or life for a period of time in which to assess the damage we are unwittingly, perhaps, inflicting on our valuable ecosystems on which so many other lives depend.
The crisis consists in whether we, as the dominant and defining species, will respond quickly and fully to the urgent signs of distress of other species and the processes by which we live. We must be clear and courageous, capable of creative thinking, unafraid of change. We must let our legislators know we want our economy and laws to reflect our respect and dependence on nature. We can do that.
Change is never easy, but do we really want our children to live in a world without songbirds?
