Bird populations face
threat of extinction

     For some peculiar reason the right wing faction within the church mocks the concerns many people share about the state of our enviroment, and the threat of extinction faced by many species including the bird populations which are faced with destruction of habitat due to the deforestation of the rain forests. During the recent presidential campaign, I listened to a far right wing television evangelist mocking the concerns of the enviromental movement, and vice president Al Gore in particular, by insisting that there was no global warming threat, and backing this up by telling the tale of one particularly cold winters day. While it might be possible to ridicule certain enviromental concerns, there are other facts that stare us in the face on a daily basis and testify to the very real and present potential of human society to cause serious destruction of the global enviroment. Animal species are threatened with a wave of mass extinctions in the opening decades of the twenty first century, an unfortunate way for the planet to send a message to the human race, a wake up call in the form of mass extinctions caused by the destruction of habitat. Included on the list of threatened species are many different types of birds who are losing habitat rapidly.

     While it might still be possible for the religious right to ridicule global warming and mock and scorn the enviromental movement as a tool of 'secular humanism' (and Satan the devil), the evidence for the destruction of the world's forests is not a subject for debate but is something that we can clearly see taking place before our very eyes, in our generation, in our time.

The impact of human populations on the world's old growth forests, animated gif...
Global Forest Watch - interactive maps.

WWFOREST.RAM - real player format
WWFOREST.AVI - windows media format

     Tropical forests exist on soils that are fragile and easily depleted, and are dependant on a cyclical replenishment of the soils from debris such as fallen leaves and dead plants. When the forest is cleared there is no means to replenish the fertility of the soils, a fertility that took ages to develop and then became a self sustaining natural system in old growth forests. These soils are unsuitable for agricultural development, and when soils do deplete, it becomes neccesary to clear further forests to maintain subsistence farming. The tropical forest functions as a source of cheap, inexpensive lumber to be harvested by industries free of the burdensome regulations found in the developed nations of the north. While timber could be harvested as a renewable resource, this is often not the case in certain ecologically fragile areas.

     In a take on the old adage of monitoring the condition of a canary in a coal mine, birds are a sensitive indicator of the state of their enviroment. According to an address delivered by Queen Noor of Jordan to the meeting of the World Conservation Union in Amman Jordan in October 2000, nearly twelve per cent of the world's birds are now critically endangered species, with the greatest threat to bird survival being posed by the destruction of habitat caused by human activities such as international logging practices and land clearing for agricultural purposes. The extinction rate for birds is one the rise, currently sitting at about 50 times the natural rate and The figures would result in an extinction rate for birds in the next century over 500 times greater than the natural rate. The areas most critically affected, not surprisingly, include the countries of Brazil and Indonesia where large scale logging of the rain forest is taking place, and also such countries as the nations of West Africa, Madagascar, China, the Philippines and New Zealand, with destruction of habitat responsible for the threat to survival of 90 per cent of the endangered species.

     The following list includes links to sites with bird pictures and bird songs worldwide, and sadly enough, if these birds go extinct, the day could come when all that remains of such creatures is the sound of their songs preserved in files on the WWW...