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New York Times (September 19)

2019/ 09/ 21 by jd in Global News

“Nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.” As an indicator species, birds serve “as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble. Unfortunately, this study is just the latest in a long line of such mounting evidence.”

 

Chicago Tribune (May 6)

2018/ 05/ 06 by jd in Global News

The Migratory Bird Treaty was enacted to prevent other birds from following the fate of passenger pigeons. Now, however, “the Interior Department has announced a sharp change in how it interprets the law,” which will essentially create a huge loophole that will “excuse any bird deaths that result from accidents, no matter how large or preventable, and limit penalties to cases of deliberate killing. So if a company sprayed pesticides with the purpose of killing a lot of birds, it would be guilty. But if it sprayed the same pesticides to get rid of insects and killed a lot of birds in the process, it would be in the clear.” This is clearly “a new threat to migratory birds.”

 

CNN (December 1)

2016/ 12/ 04 by jd in Global News

“Nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, by weight… Some 8 million tons of plastic trash leak into the ocean annually, and it’s getting worse every year. Americans are said to use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.” The potentially catastrophic impact largely lies beyond our gaze in remote places, like Midway Atoll, where birds are dying from plastic consumption. There is now also “growing evidence that fish may prefer eating plastic to food,” and that the nano-plastics and styrene that make their way into the food chain could have profoundly negative consequences for humankind.

 

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