I
recall hearing on the radio on October 31, 2011, that, according to the
United Nations, world population had just reached 7 billion. I then went
online to get details, and discovered Index
Mundi – a data portal that turns facts and statistics into easy-to-use
visuals. Since that day, the number of people on our planet has risen by
another ten percent, and now increases by about 135 individuals per minute.
This
vast and exponentially growing change in human population has fundamentally
changed the biomass on our planet. Livestock (mostly cattle and pigs) now
represent 60 per cent of the world’s mammals; people, 36 per cent; wild
animals, 4 per cent.
This
explains a dilemma facing humankind. As I suggested in a Critica
commentary titled This is for the
birds, I am one of a vast tribe of people around the world who get
considerable enjoyment from birding – bird-watching to the uninitiated – and
contributing in my small way to global databases about the health of our
world’s bird populations.
For
example, during the vast North American bird migration last spring, I was
part of a group of 14 birders from Calgary who spent five days at
Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park – so named because of ancient Indigenous
carvings on local cliffs – to do five days of birding. The areas we explored
were near Milk River – little more than a creek in that area, which
originates in Montana, turns south and joins other streams flowing south.
Eventually, its waters flow into the Mississippi.
eBird: The purpose of our visit was
to count the number of species present in a few well-defined regions at the
border between Canada’s province of Alberta and the American state of
Montana. By foot, at least, we could cross these open borders at will.
However, we stayed on the Canadian side of the border, and spent those days
identifying species and counting the numbers the individual birds in each
species. We then submit detailed reports – a dozen of them in all – to
Cornell University’s eBird website – a
network the school launched in 2002, in conjunction with the National Audubon
Society. This site accumulates and produces geographical data on birds
throughout the year and around the world. Based in Ithaca, New York, Cornell
also helps maintain a fleet of birdcams positioned to video active nests.
This enables the curious to observe birds around the world raising their
young.
Increasingly
the centre of the ornithological world, eBird enables birders and
ornithologists to record and enumerate bird populations from every habitat.
Enthusiasts like our small band do bird counts within given geographical
regions. Like others on our expedition, enthusiast Jennifer Solem was
passionate about the value of these expeditions. “I fear bird counts may
become very important for identifying the effects of floods and now, again,
fires in crucial boreal breeding areas.” She was hopeful, she said, that the
data emerging from bird counts could serve as “motivation for prioritizing
conservation in [forest] habitat.” For birds and other species, habitat is
everything.
For
ornithology as much as the birds it studies, the issue is more serious than
it is in the vast, sparsely populated provinces of Canada. Globally speaking,
one in eight bird species face possible extinction, according to a riveting recent
report by Birdlife International. Calling birdlife “nature at its most
enthralling, the report describes that Birds are one of the best known and
most highly valued elements of the natural world.” They comprise more than
eleven thousand different species, “ranging from hummingbirds to ostriches,
from penguins to eagles.” These species are unique in appearance, habits and
habitat. Some still occur in vast flocks, while others are now down to a few
remaining individuals. Some spend their entire lives within a few hectares of
land. Some undertake annual migrations that cover half the world.
With
those bits of knowledge under my hat, I drove down with the expedition’s de
facto organizer, a long-time friend named Dave Russum. We talked about
the not-too-obvious reality that the days are now long gone when you were
likely to drive along rural roads and find your windshield covered with the
remains of bugs.
A
geologist by training, Russum reminded me that “The first insects on earth
evolved about 400 million years ago while birds, as we know them, first
evolved about 60 million years ago.Insects were therefore well established
around the globe when birds showed up.” For many bird species, they were an
obvious food source. He added that many species are “only reliant on insects
for part of the year.” Such species as swallows and flycatchers, however,
“are dependent on insects for most of their nourishment, not just on their
breeding grounds and wintering grounds, but also during their migration in
the spring and fall.”If natural habitat and the associated insects are
destroyed over a significant area, many of the birds dependent on those
insects cannot survive. “Their populations will rapidly decline.”
Bugs
in the ecosystem:
I reflected on that a bit. When I left Toronto for Calgary in the 1970s, the
car that reached this city was a mess, with splattered bugs covering the
windshield. I can’t remember when I last noticed such a thing, even after a
long drive into rural Alberta.The reason is that the absolute number of
insects (not species) on our planet is in rapid decline, from Arctic to
Antarctic, and virtually everywhere in between. That idea led to this
commentary. Today, more
than 40 per cent of insect species are threatened with out-and-out
extinction.
Why
is that important? Animals, mostly insects, pollinate 87% of flowering
plants, according to a commentary in The
Economist. “Without insects, most plants could not reproduce. They break
down and recycle the nutrients that plants need for photosynthesis. They
decompose organic waste and feed a large proportion of all birds and bats.”
In
terms of the number of species, insects are by far the most abundant life
forms. They are so numerous that they contain three times as much mass as
humans and 30 times that of all wild mammals. There are more than one million
insect species, compared to some 6,000 varieties of mammal, and 18,000
classes of bird.
Insects
live in almost every habitat on the planet – on all five continents, in lakes
and rivers, seas and oceans, sloughs and deserts. And they are vital
contributors to the food chain everywhere. Mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and
insects themselves can all be wholly or partly insectivores. The rapid
decline in these food sources is contributing to rapid declines in other
species of many types.
In
Canada, efforts to save threatened species are failing badly. Of the more
than 700 plants and animals currently listed under the Federal Government’s
Species at Risk Act, most are losing ground at an alarming rate. According to
World Wildlife Canada, on average those species have declined by another 28
per cent since the act came into effect in 2002. So, is being listed for
federal protection a rescue operation or a recommendation to enter a ward for
incurables? The act requires Ottawa to protect listed species. However, the
law does not offer best practices on how to save them. Nor does it advise
conservation groups on what to do when confronted with competing needs. With
so many species in peril, and limited funds available, Canada’s conservation
efforts to date look like a patchwork of measures guided as much by intuition
and chance as by science. And so it goes around the world.
