Study: Pollinating birds won't cross cleared land

[Judi Lynn]

Study: Pollinating birds won't cross cleared land
2/10/2009, 12:29 p.m. PST
By JEFF BARNARD
The Associated Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Scientists from Oregon State University have glued tiny transmitters to hummingbirds in Costa Rica to figure out why plant pollination by birds and insects is crashing around the world.

They found that even when it meant a much longer trip, the hermit hummingbirds kept to the forest, rather than cross land cleared for farms.

The findings are published in the journal Biology Letters and shed light on a long-standing issue in ecology: the fragmentation of ecosystems by roads and development.

The scientists say the findings suggest that isolated patches of forest may ultimately result in species decline, because birds that normally spread pollen won't cross developed land to visit them.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/news-29/1234298056126110.xml&storylist=orlocal

[loudsue]

1. Birds are so essential to the ecosystems of the world.

You'd think humans would have a little bit of the survival instinct themselves, but our corporate policies seem to be putting us on a clear path to extinction... all over the world. Governments need to take corporations in hand, rather than the system we have now, where corporations rule the government.

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Hummingbirds are fickle as hell.

I had a few successes when a blue black salvia bloomed in my backyard. But they won't even venture in without it.

Oh, and the bees are back! Took me five years and a lot of overgrown wild vines, but, I did it.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I often rail against predatory capitalism--for good reason--but, really,

predatory capitalism is not the only culprit in mankind's rape of the planet--just the one that we in the U.S. are responsible for, and could conceivable curtail, if we ever get our voting system back from the e-voting corpos and their 'TRADE SECRET' code.

Humankind has been destroying the planet for thousands of years. Way back in Ancient Greece, Plato was complaining about the denuding of Greek forests and the muddy, eroded streams that resulted. North Africa, the "breadbasket of the Roman Empire," is now mostly sand. The Middle East. China. Wherever human civilization arose, ecological disaster followed, from human-caused destruction of forests, rivers, streams and everything in them, and from over-fishing, over-hunting and the endless spread of human development into wild areas, decimating birds, mammals and numerous species, and shredding the delicate balance of life in any ecosystem that we invaded. The "industrial revolution" accelerated our impacts, by many orders of magnitude--and globalisation has sent the planet over the edge to complete ruination--but the thoughtless exploitation of Nature seems to be inherent in the human species, maybe a design flaw in our very brains; quite possibly a fatal one. We evolved through the millenia surviving many a changed environment, with our clever brains, dexterous hands and two-feet-made-for walking, but the one environment that we may not survive is the one we ourselves have created: the industrialized, globalized desert that we now face.

We have turned large swaths of farmland into salty desert with over-farming, pesticides, chemical fertilizers and mono-culture. We have turned large swaths of the oceans into "dead zones"--sea deserts, where there is now no life. 80% of the planet's forests--the "lungs" of the planet--are now destroyed or severely damaged (much of the deforestation having occurred in the last 100 years). We are turning the planet that gave us birth--the planet out of whose rich biological matrix our brains, our DNA, evolved--into a lifeless rock. Look at Mars and see our future: the precious skin of the atmosphere stripped off; a vast landscape of rocks and dust; lifeless (except for possible microbial life in subsurface water tables). How can an intelligent creature that evolved on Mother Earth, do this to Mother Earth? I don't know. It's a philosophical question that is beyond me. But that's what we've done. And here we are, struggling to make it conscious in time--and to re-tool all of our political/economic systems in time--to avert disaster, the end of the human race. (Disaster from our point of view; hard to know what the birds or the dolphins might think of it. Possibly we will all die of skin cancer, floods, fires, starvation and war, and they will survive, and think, "Good riddance!")

After being nearly oblivious to the environmental movement in the first half of my life, I became VERY involved in it, in the second half. I certainly have seen that the biggest obstacle to saving the planet, in this country, is corporate power. That may not be the case in China, for instance, where population pressure and the desire of government leaders to "catch up" with western industrialization are bigger drivers than private economic power. (Combine them all--population pressure, dictatorial centralized government and private corporate/uber-rich power--and you have the environmental holocaust that China is becoming.) I suspect that my change of consciousness about the environment is fairly typical in our culture. Despite corporate power, and huge setbacks like the Bush junta, we still get more information here about the environment, and have more advanced grass roots development, than say, China, Russia or the Middle East. The only two places that are in advance of us are Europe/UK and South America (where indigenous reverence toward Mother Nature--'Pachamama'--is gaining political power, at long last).

Are we going to make it? I really don't know. The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years, at present levels of pollution and consumption--50 years to the death of the planet! The death. Gone. Fini. Kaput. A lot of things can happen in 50 years, or even 10 years. Maybe our clever brains will rescue us once again. But we are playing with fire, to say the least. Russian roulette would be a better metaphor. The gun is at our head. Our finger is squeezing the trigger--for greed, for "jobs," for "profit," for short-term gain, for dominance, for superiority. Which chamber is the bullet in?

[The2ndWheel]

4. Gadgets that could do what trees do are better for the economy

Because it would create jobs to cut down the trees, to make the machines that cut down the trees, to make the machines that would turn the trees into products, to maintain the machines that cut down the trees and make the products, and then to make the machines that would do the job of the trees, to maintain the machines that were made to do the job of the trees, etc, etc.

Same with the birds. If the birds aren't going to be useful anymore, other than to glue stuff to them, then we can create jobs to kill the birds, and then create jobs that would make the machines that would do the jobs that the birds refuse to do.

The stimulus plan needs to be invested into taking the environment out of the equation. Trees and birds don't make a salary. They don't buy anything. They don't pay taxes. Unless we can plant more trees and breed more birds to make more stuff out of them, they're just in the way.

[Peace Patriot]

5. LOL!

:rofl:

:grouphug:

[DCKit]

6. We've known of the necessity of "Wildlife Corridors" for decades.

It's not a stretch to imagine they'd be useful in every ecosystem.