North America lost almost 3 billion chickens since 1970

Birds disappear against the United States, although many of us have probably noticed. Over the last half century, the bird populations in North America have undergone a silent crisis, with scientists estimating that have lost 29% of the continent’s population total bird, like a new article in the journal Science published on Thursday revealed . This is a loss of nearly 3 billion birds in the last half century. “I would call it an impending disaster,” said Ken Rosenberg, a scientist for the conservation of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy and the lead author on Thursday in the journal Science. “We have to do something now, and we have to be careful.” Scientists have populations of endangered birds and endangered for years of monitoring and found that some populations were declining. But they believe that this endangered species must employ replaced by “generalist species” or adaptable bird that is more favorable to human-induced changes in their environment. What’s numb in this ultimate test is the fact that a large population declines in birds in North America as a whole, not limited recorded a trend of any species or ecological niche. “Most of this loss is the common occurring species,” says Rosenberg. “And ‘in any environment.” Birds Prato showed the greatest impact, more than half their number, more than 700 million individuals in 31 breeding species lost since 1970 birds in the woods also live greatest hits showed a total loss of more than a billion birds. “The birds are actually an unprecedented crisis due to human activity,” says Nicole Michel larger quantity ecologist with the National Audubon Society. “We must act really quick.” Scientists believe that due to the loss of populations of birds on a variety of factors to intensify the first of habitat loss, agricultural production and disruption of coastal ecosystems, everything intensifying effects of climate change anthropogenic worsened. In particular, the paper the authors believe that the massive loss of grassland bird populations largely of agriculture causes are driven by the increased use of pesticides and loss of habitat. Not all species showed a decrease in population, and many decades also showed gains, but the overall decline in bird populations has been amazing. This large decline may not be readily visible to the average bird watcher, but decades of data from the devastating trend is all too clear. “The loss of this magnitude an unfolding ecological processes could signal,” says Rosenberg. “People need to start paying attention to the birds around them, because if leakage continues, we are going to notice that there are real and feel.” To compile the report, Rosenberg and his colleagues have seen data from sources that the 529 species of birds continental United States and Canada tracked distant geographic regions and habitats of time. Scientists have relied heavily on information about the birds nesting survey in North America collected a long-standing partnership between scientists and amateur bird watchers. These efforts have shown continuous decline in bird populations. And when scientists use supercomputers examined data from weather radar, biomass of migratory birds in the last ten years recorded by Night overload, they have found similar population decline. “This is innovative because the installation of the radar data,” said Michel. This information, Michel explains allowed bird populations that scientists race matters in sparsely populated northern regions, where people are not necessarily able to achieve them, and also allowed the authors report independently verify the survey data, the losses huge population showed. There was a ray of hope in the overall sad results of the paper – waterfowl showed population increases, probably due in part to the billions of dollars of investments that have been expressed with regard to the protection of wetlands and restoration. For the authors, these gains show that this crisis must be a full-blown disaster does not necessarily take taking civic and governmental measures to protect the species from further impacts. “We are at a point where we can reverse these declines,” says Rosenberg. “We must act now.” The urgently needed public policies, as well as Rosenberg notes that there will be measures to ensure that the individual citizens take support of birds help people, like plants indoors native species in gardens and keep the cats. For Michel hits such as the recovery of populations of birds of prey by DDT, a show of powerful pesticides were forbidden, we have not yet reached the point of no return for the birds of North America. “This is a crisis and a cry of alarm,” he says. “But the birds are elastic, if you give them a chance.”
Picture copyright by Gary Hershorn-Corbis / Getty Images