Is There Really an "Aflockalypse?" It's Not the One in the News.

From Cornell Lab of Ornithology - January 24, 2011

Ever since blackbirds fell from the sky in Arkansas on New Year's Eve, the Cornell Lab has continued to receive numerous inquiries from the media and the concerned public about the significance of that event and other reports of dead birds at locations around the world. These isolated events, although dramatic, are not highly unusual in frequency or scale. Within the United States, for example, the USGS has recorded 188 events during the past 10 years involving more than 1,000 birds per incident--about 18 events per year on average, or more than one per month, attributed to disease and other causes.

"Although wildlife die-offs always pose a concern, they are not all that unusual," said Jonathan Sleeman, director of the USGS NWHC in Madison, Wis., which is completing its analyses of the Arkansas and Louisiana birds. "It's important to study and understand what happened in order to determine if we can prevent mortality events from happening again."

In 2010, the USGS NWHC documented eight die-off events of 1,000 or more birds. The causes: starvation, avian cholera, Newcastle disease and parasites, according to Sleeman. Such records show that, while the causes of death may vary, events like the red-winged blackbird die-off in Beebe, Ark., and the smaller one near Baton Rouge, La., are more common than people may realize.

Should we be worried about an "aflockalypse?" Yes, but not about the media coverage focusing on isolated events that affect only a few hundred or thousand birds at a time. It's the constant, chronic losses from habitat destruction and other causes that should truly concern us. Consider that 100 million birds are estimated to die from window collisions in the United States alone each year. That's more than 270,000 per day on average. Cats are estimated to kill another 100 million per year. And that's just the tip of the iceberg; habitat loss and degradation are the largest causes of massive declines in the numbers of birds.

Although we cannot witness these declines on a given day, citizen-science participants have contributed decades of data that point to truly alarming declines. Data from the Breeding Bird Survey show that Rusty Blackbirds, for example, have declined by 95% since the 1960s, indicating a loss of tens of millions of birds. Data from Project FeederWatch show that Evening Grosbeaks have also declined rangewide since the 1980s.

Don't underestimate the power of bird watchers to "witness" and document the large-scale declines that might otherwise go undetected until it's too late. With your help, the Cornell Lab and other organizations are working hard to monitor bird species and address the root causes of decline. Check out www.ebird.org for more information on how you can help document bird observations.

Converting Palm Oil Companies from Forest Destroyers into Forest Protectors

By Jeremy Hance and Rhett Butler from Mongabay.com

In efforts to save the world's remaining rainforests great hopes have been pinned on "degraded lands" — deforested lands that are presently sitting idle in tropical countries. Optimists say shifting agriculture to such lands will help humanity produce enough food to meet growing demand without sacrificing forests and biodiversity and exacerbating social conflict. But to date, degraded lands remain an enigma, especially in Indonesia, where deforestation continues at a rapid pace. Degraded lands are often misclassified by various Indonesian ministries—land in a far-off province may be listed as "wasteland" by Jakarta, but in reality is blanked by verdant forest that sequesters carbon, houses wildlife, and affords communities with food, water, and other essentials. Granting logging and plantation concessions on these lands can result in conflict and environmental degradation.

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Losing Nature's Medicine Cabinet

By Jeremy Hance
Mongabay.com

In all the discussions of saving the world's biodiversity from extinction, one point is often and surprisingly forgotten: the importance of the world's species in providing humankind with a multitude of life-saving medicines so far, as well as the certainty that more vital medications are out there if only we save the unheralded animals and plants that contain cures unknown. Already, species have provided humankind everything from quinine to aspirin, from morphine to numerous cancer and HIV-fighting drugs.

"As the ethnobotanist Dr. Mark Plotkin commented, the history of medicine can be written in terms of its reliance on and utilization of natural products," physician Christopher Herndon told mongabay.com. Herndon is co-author of a recent paper in the journal Biotropica, which calls for policy-makers and the public to recognize how biodiversity underpins not only ecosystems, but medicine.

"Our dependence today on nature for health has not diminished as significantly as commonly presumed. Over the past quarter century, more than half of all pharmaceuticals brought to market were directly derived from or modeled after compounds from other species," Herndon explains.

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Cuba opens Cuban Bird Banding Centre

On July 17th, 2010, the Johann Christoph Gundlach Cuban Bird Banding Centre (CBBC) was officially opened. The banding centre was opened in commemoration of the Johann Christoph Gundlach bicentenary, a German naturalist regarded as the third discoverer of Cuba ,

The CBBC is located at the Siboney-Jutic¡ Ecological Reserve, managed by the Eastern Centre of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (BIOECO) in Santiago de Cuba .

The main goals of this permanent banding centre are to study Cuban birds moult patterns, postnatal dispersion, sex ratios and life expectancy, to obtain survival estimates and to assess the importance of Cuban habitats for bird migration. We also aim at creating a data base that could help ornithologists and conservationists from Cuba , the Caribbean basin and North America to better preserve this key resource we share: birds.

This initiative is part of the Cuban efforts to implement the Caribbean Biological Corridor together with Haiti and the Dominican Republic , and we expect that in the future the CBBC serves as a training facility for young ornithologists and conservationists from the region. The rings used at the CBBC are the first labelled rings used in Cuba with the name of a Cuban institution (BIOECO) and the name of the country ( CUBA ).

Feeders & Breeders

In a surprise, extra birdfeed produces fewer chicks.

From Conservation Magazine: That tube of seed in your backyard may not necessarily be helping prop up bird populations. In an unexpected result, British researchers found that feeding some birds through the breeding season actually reduced reproduction rates. The finding could have implications for efforts to aid endangered species by supplementing their diet.

Researchers have been studying the impact of bird feeding on wild populations for decades. Few studies, however, have looked at how long-term feeding affects reproduction. To find out, a team led by S. James Reynolds of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom decided to offer free food to birds living in the Chaddesley Woods National Nature Reserve, a 101-hectare woodland in Worcestershire.

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Is Brazil planning to turn the Amazon into a series of stagnant reservoirs?

From mongabay.com:

The decision last week by the Brazilian government to move forward on the $17 billion Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu river will set in motion a plan to build more than 100 dams across the Amazon basin, potentially turning tributaries of the world's largest river into 'an endless series of stagnant reservoirs', says a new short film released by Amazon Watch and International Rivers.

The film, narrated by Sigourney Weaver, uses a Google Earth 3-D tour to illustrate the potential impact of the dam. Belo Monte's reservoirs will flood 668 square kilometers, including parts of the city of Altamira, displacing more than 20,000 people. It will reduce the flow of the mighty Xingu to a trickle during parts of the year, reducing water supplies for downstream indigenous populations, blocking fish migration thereby disrupting local fisheries, and likely condemning several aquatic species to extinction. Flooding of forest areas will generate massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent that CO2, and increase the risk of malaria in surrounding areas. Furthermore, if earlier dam projects in the Amazon are any model, Belo Monte will contribute to large-scale deforestation by local people who can no longer earn income from fishing or traditional livelihoods. Electricity grids, transmission lines, and access roads will put further pressure on the rainforest.

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NEW SPECIES DISCOVERED: The adorable titi monkey

From Conservation International News:

What’s adorable, furry and has never been seen before? Callicebus caquetensis, a new species of titi monkey discovered on a scientific expedition to the Colombian Amazon. Researchers from the National University of Colombia who discovered the new primate consider it to be critically endangered due to rapid loss of the forest where it lives and its small population.

Titi monkeys (or zogui zogui as they are called in Spanish) have one of the most complex calls in the animal kingdom and use it every morning to mark their territory.

"This discovery is particularly important because it reminds us that we should celebrate the diversity of earth but also we must take action now to preserve it," said José Vicente Rodríguez, head of science at Conservation International in Colombia and president of the Colombia Association of Zoology.