 In the U.S., recent annual estimates of bird deaths due to: Cats = 2.4 billion bird deaths Collisions from building glass = 600 million bird deaths Land wind turbines = <200,000 bird deaths Some politicians claim wind turbines “kill all the birds.” But… they’re not really worried about birds. Rather, they prefer we stick with oil & gas over renewable #energy. https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15195/wind-turbines-are-not-killing-fields-for-birds/ #climatechange 58 comments
@ashwinvis @rjt @Sheril Cats are usually top predator in whatever ecosystem they’re a part of. Tigers, Lions, Jaguars, (Mountain cats/Pumas) etc. They are incredible animals.  @nicktron @ashwinvis @rjt @Sheril I know I'm coming across as nit picking...and I get the irony of that, however; domestic cats sit halfway on the predator list (food chain). They're small and other predators predate on them. It's a unique position for them and one I wish more people understood as it explains a lot of domestic cat behaviors. They shouldn't be allowed to roam. More cats die alone outside than "survive". @rjt @Sheril I'm quite surprised that cats kill more birds than tall buildings. But when I looked up building related deaths the estimate was up to 1billion, so quite a broad range. Given how many people have housecats in the US, how are they killing all these birds? Does the US have poor animal welfare. So cats aren't neutered, run feral & breed (the UK has the RSPCA for example)? The windfarms point def rings true though.Those quoting bird related deaths dont really give a f**k about birds.1/2   @Sheril @lisamelton even then this is only counting deaths by direct physical cause. The amount bird populations have dropped due to habitat loss and failed nests due to intensive farming and fishing destroying nest sites and decimating their prey, probably dwarfs even the toll from cats (who are mostly an urban phenomenon) and is the background that makes these other causes significant at all.  @StrangeNoises Particulate pollution from burning stuff can't help birds, either. I know nothing but imagine their lungs are pretty finely tuned by evolution in terms of optimising power/weight ratio, etc, so anything gumming them up is likely to have a disproportionate effect, more so than for ground animals where weight isn't quite so critical. @StrangeNoises @Sheril @lisamelton Ornithologists agree. US has lost 3 billion birds in the last half century. Cornell University says that our bird population has fallen by 30% since 1970.  @Barbramon1 @StrangeNoises @Sheril @lisamelton @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton they can't both be right can they? I suspect the latter is a vast underestimate, but i also look askance at the former, frankly. Here in the UK naturalists are talking about many species having lost more like 90% (ninety percent) of their numbers over a few decades. And they squarely blame intensive farming, and the other thing we don't talk enough about, the absolute insect apocalypse that's going on. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton i mean, we tend to notice the loss of insect life only in positive terms; how our cars aren't plastered with their bodies along the front after a long journey, fewer flies invading the house this summer, that sort of thing. But it's a vast disaster, and the birds are - very nearly literally - the canaries in that coalmine. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton also to be remembered: Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Every generation (in the last century or two) has witnessed a decline, but we think of how nature was when we were growing up to be normal, and the written accounts of its huge, vast, abundance say a couple of hundred years ago barely seem credible. @oclsc @Barbramon1 @Sheril @lisamelton cats hunting birds in suburban gardens would be a rounding error if it wasn't for the wider environmental holocaust going on. they can be killing that many more birds than windfarms and still be a scapegoat to distract you from the real problem.  @Sheril apparently you can also lower the number a lot if you paint the blades. I think the idea was that painting one blade red and the rest white would make birds realize there were a solid object to avoid. @Sheril I guess there aren't any numbers for how many birds will die from the neonicotids being used on seeds for industrial crops. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4010909-under-the-epas-watch-unchecked-insecticides-are-causing-another-silent-spring/ #Birds #chemicals #climatechange #environment @Sheril @Sheril great summary. I'm always mesmerized by the fact that even within the academic community in ecology and ornithology, people who don't study this issue directly keep repeating this fallacy planted by the fossil fuel interests Popping on the visualization (also linked above) bc there were a few questions about the data. This chart displays the US Fish & Wildlife estimates of annual bird mortality in the U.S. from several human causes. /2 @Sheril while agreeing with the basic premise (wind turbines kill a suprisinglow number of birds) I do wonder if we are ignoring the "quality" when we just look at the quantity. I would imagine that cats mainly catch small, very common birds (sparrows, etc) while the wind turbines may kill a larger proportion of the bigger and more endagered species (birds of prey and the like).  @Nonya_Bidniss @Sheril @Sheril This would be more readable if shown in millions. 2,400 vs 0.23 instead of uncountable zeros. @Sheril So frustrating that a meta analysis from a decade ago that was mostly guess work and approximation is still being sited as an accurate rate of cat caused bird deaths. They even state in the appendix that while most bird deaths are attributed to feral cats "no empirically driven estimate of un-owned cat abundance exists for the contiguous U.S." Here is a break down of why the data is essentially intentional misinformation from the NIH @BlinkPopShift @Sheril thanks for sharing, this is interesting and relevant. @Sheril Honestly? I've seen half a dozen birds killed by hawks at my bird feeder so far this year, and I've only seen one cat take a run at them, and he missed! Now how about a fact-check on the BS being spread by the liars at Republican HQ, about windmills and #birds. https://factcheck.afp.com/bird-deaths-misleading-numbers-conceal-biggest-culprits  Oh I been protesting this in outer-banks right next to the wildlife sanctuary in North Carolina, the election swing a win or loss by 10,000 votes and they approve these horrible projects with slim margins. @Sheril Humans have removed most predators from our landscapes allowing small birds to flourish in a way they would not naturally be able. Despite the cat predation, we don't see any small birds in danger of extinction. Cats pose no danger for condors, and condors are unlikely to be flying into glass buildings. So we would want to know what kind of birds are flying into the wind turbines. If condors ... that's a problem. If seagulls ... not so much. @Sheril I made this chart in 2019 and included error bars where available to help with some questions. from 10/08/2019 and this tweet https://twitter.com/honesthypocrite/status/1181673095637155846 #Bird #deaths annually by hazard. #Cats kill 10,000 times more birds than #wind #turbines. Even oil pits (!) kill three times as many. Improved visualization inspired by @1a story today using @Tableau and data from https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/threats-birds  @Sheril Wind is way better than coal or oil, but still has issues like how much land it uses and how it disrupts local wildlife. Nuclear supplemented with solar is the ONLY future.    @Sheril without even getting into the deaths due to the habitat destruction caused by the fossil fuel industry @Sheril The same lies here in #Germany. No windmills back in the 70ies, when I started with #birding as hobby. Three breeding pairs of #WhiteTailedEagle in the state of #SchleswigHolstein, where I lived. Now more than 120 pairs. The same with other large birds, #Osprey, #RedKite, #BlackKite, #Spoonbill, #WhiteStork, #GreyHeron well increasing. #GreatEgret and #LittleEgret as new breeding species. The same tendency in #Denmark. Lots of large windmills now, great birds increasing.  @Sheril Very interesting. I suspect the causes may differ by country - even so, I'm surprised changes in agriculture is not in the list here for the US as, here in the UK, it's by far the biggest reason. Perhaps, it's due to the sheer size of the US (unless they made a mistake). @Sheril ...which also makes things more difficult for smaller garden birds now as they have to compete with ever increasing numbers of big birds to eat. https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help-birds/where-have-all-the-birds-gone/is-the-number-of-birds-in-decline/ |
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@Sheril I have to say, I had no idea cats were so deadly.