THE trade
winds were pushing a misty fog across the treetops of the Alakai wilderness — a
cloud forest atop the mountain hinterlands of Kauai — when my guide spotted
something yellowish flitting among the boughs of an ohia tree.
“Bird!” he declared. I peered through my binoculars and spotted a lemon-lime
bird with a faint black mask. It was an akekee, one of the rarest birds in the
world.
Rare birds aren’t a rarity in Hawaii, which leads the nation with 35 birds on
the endangered species list. The green, tranquil island of Kauai has lost almost
half of its native forest bird species. Only eight of the island’s original 13
forest birds still exist, six of which can be found only on Kauai. They include
the akekee, the akikiki, and the puaiohi, three species that are on the brink of
blinking out.
Such peril is a morbid draw for birders: an opportunity to see extremely rare
birds that, like the passenger pigeon, may someday soon exist only in museum
exhibits and photographs — reason enough for me to carve some birding time out
of a recent family vacation in Kauai.
Collapsing native bird populations aren’t promoted by Kauai’s tourism industry.
At a car rental counter at Lihue Airport, brochure racks were stuffed with
advertisements for charter fishing and whale watching. But finding a birding
guide is a bit like trying to score a Cuban cigar: Keep asking around until you
find somebody who knows a guy. My guy sent a cryptic e-mail the night before our
planned trip — “like to met by 06:30 Thursday at Puu Hinahina Overlook.”
The next morning I drove 35 miles in the early-morning darkness from ocean-side
Poipu up into the Waimea Canyon in the middle of the island. Dawn revealed a
different world — gone were coconut palm trees and road signs touting luaus. I
was amid a dense forest of gray trees. At the overlook parking lot, I met David
Kuhn, a middle-aged man with a graying beard in khaki vest and shorts. He had
wedged me into a busy schedule: 10 straight days of birding tours. His clientele
are mostly wealthy travelers from around the globe, he said, “world birders in
search of those rarest species near extinction.”
I hopped in his truck for a half-hour drive to the Alakai Wilderness Preserve, a
bumpy ride down a mud road. He parked at the trailhead of the Alakai Swamp Trail
on a ridge above a verdant river valley. The air was moist and cool.
I slipped on a rain jacket and followed a boardwalk into the last remaining
stand of native forest on Kauai. It was a quiet morning, no bird chatter. After
30 minutes of birdless hiking, Mr. Kuhn wielded his bamboo walking stick like a
machete and bushwhacked off-trail. We clambered over tree roots and tiptoed amid
bushy ferns to a small clearing in the forest canopy. There we spotted a single
akekee that alighted in the crook of a gnarled tree branch 50 feet above our
heads. It flitted over to a leaf cluster at the tip of the branch. “See how it’s
working to pry open the leaf bud of the ohia?” he whispered. “‘Akekee has a
crossed bill that’s specialized for opening the buds and getting at the insects
inside.”
Suddenly, he stopped talking and cocked his head. He kissed the back of his
hand, producing a squeaking noise that summoned a curious Kauai elepaio, a
little gray bird with dark wing bars. Next he alerted me to a lemon yellow
anianiau on a tree branch above us. Then he pointed to a fire-engine-red apapane
shuttling among similarly bright red ohia blossoms. “Apapane resemble the
flowers from which they get nectar,” Mr. Kuhn told me. In a 10-minute time span,
I had four new birds on my life list.
Back on the trail, we descended a few hundred steps on a wooden staircase into
the river valley, hopscotched rocks across the stream, then summited the ridge
on the other side. There the trail snaked beneath the wooden skeletons of World
War II-era telegraph poles. Then we heard a squeaky whirring echo in the forest.
“Iiwi!” Mr. Kuhn exclaimed. The bright crimson bird flashed like a red siren as
it fluttered to a nearby tree branch. There the iiwi stayed put, allowing me to
admire its long, delicately curved beak, which had evolved especially for
sucking nectar out of flowers. Iiwi aren’t an endangered species, Mr. Kuhn told
me, but like many of the island’s other forest birds, their population is
plummeting on Kauai.
The problem, Mr. Kuhn told me, isn’t just sparse habitat, but disease. In recent
decades it has been warm enough for two months of the year in Alakai for avian
malaria to be transmitted via mosquitoes. If climate change projections for
Alakai, published in the scientific journal Nature, are correct, it may be warm
enough for year-round malaria transmission in a couple of decades, which could
be the end of the endangered akekee. Its population is down to a few thousand
individual birds, which is about where the Kauai thrush, once the island’s most
abundant bird, was before it was wiped out by a single catastrophic event —
Hurricane Iniki in 1992.
As Mr. Kuhn and I hiked out of Alakai, I asked how much longer he thought he
could continue leading trips like this. “The population will probably linger for
another two or three decades,” he said. “I may be able to bring people to see
them for another 10 or so years.”
Two days later I hopped into another truck with Carl Berg for another birding
day trip, this one a more leisurely driving tour to the north side of Kauai. Mr.
Berg is a retired City College of New York ecology professor and Harvard
research scientist who moved here 20 years ago. But like Mr. Kuhn, he tells the
same dire story of Kauai’s birds on the brink of extinction.
“We don’t have any real wetlands left, so this is what the birds use,” he said
as he guided his truck onto a nondescript dirt road that led into flooded taro
fields. There was no welcome sign, but we were entering the Hanalei National
Wildlife Refuge, closed to the public but open to researchers like Mr. Berg. The
refuge consists mostly of watery pools resembling rice paddies where farmers
grow taro, a green leafy crop used to make poi. Poi is a native Hawaiian food, a
paste of cooked, mashed taro root. Poi demand is booming, supporting this
cluster of taro farms in the Hanalei River valley, which serves as a stand-in
water bird habitat to replace lost native wetlands.
Hawaiian ducks and Hawaiian coots swam in the flooded fields. Hawaiian moorhens
(nearly identical to mainland moorhens) stalked the drainage ditches. We drove
deeper into the refuge, drawing stares from shirtless farm workers, and stopped
at a pool with a smartly plumed black-and-white, stick-legged figure — a water
bird in formalwear. It was a Hawaiian stilt, which like the duck, moorhen and
coot, is a federally endangered species.
Such easy viewing (I never left the truck) lulled me into thinking these were
common birds, but Mr. Berg said they are as imperiled as Alakai’s forest birds.
“Of the about 2,000 Hawaiian moorhens left, maybe 500 are in here,” Mr. Berg
said. “Now, what if there’s a tsunami? What if the sea level rises six feet” — a
possible climate change scenario by century’s end — “and this is all flooded by
salt water? Where will these birds go?”
He said that when a tsunami hit the northwestern Hawaiian islands after the
Japanese earthquake in March, the nesting birds there had nowhere to go. About
110,000 albatross chicks and thousands of adults were washed away at Midway
Atoll.
After visiting a few beaches looking for shorebirds, Mr. Berg and I made a last
stop at the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge — a scenic tourist pull-off
with a lighthouse and an endless ocean view. I breathed the salty air, enjoying
the respite from two days of gallows birding for species near extinction. White
dots, numerous as stars, speckled the cliff side — oceanic birds by the
thousands. The air was a lofty carnival of wheeling red-footed boobies and
soaring Laysan albatrosses stretching their six-foot wingspans. Red-tailed
tropicbirds — elegant white seabirds with trailing tails like twin red Twizzler
sticks — rode the wind in looping backward arcs.
Mr. Berg began rattling off the perils these birds face, perils like ocean
acidification. I tuned him out. My ears had grown weary. Then I noticed a nene —
a smaller relative of Canada geese, but with a streaked neck — grazing on the
lighthouse lawn. Nene were nearly extinct 60 years ago, but a recovery effort
has them thriving again on Kauai. They are making a comeback because people
cared, so much so that the nene was designated Hawaii’s official state bird.
As a nene waddled by, I wondered whether people care as much about Kauai’s other
birds.
“How many people know that so many birds on this island are dying out?” I asked
Mr. Berg.
“Look around you,” he told me. We were in a herd of baseball-hatted tourists,
many snapping photos of birds. “You’re probably the only one here who knows.”
IF YOU GO
Alakai Wilderness Preserve
The wilderness can be accessed via the 3.5-mile Alakai Swamp Trail in Kokee
State Park (808-241-3444; hawaiistateparks.org/parks/kauai). David Kuhn runs a
business called Sounds Hawaiian that makes nature CDs, but he also leads birding
trips into Alakai when his schedule allows (808-335-0398;
soundshawaiian.com;$250 for a day trip). Learn more about Alakai’s forest birds
from the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project (kauaiforestbirds.org).
Kauai North
The Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge is closed to the public. The Kilauea Point
National Wildlife Refuge (808-828-1413; fws.gov/kilaueapoint; $5 entry fee) is a
popular tourist stop for a scenic ocean overlook with a lighthouse. Carl Berg
(808-639-2968; hawaiianwildlifetours.com; $200 for four hours) leads birding
tours to both refuges and elsewhere on Kauai’s north side.
BIRDING KAUAI ON YOUR OWN
Finding a knowledgeable guide willing to take you birding on Kauai can be
difficult. Here’s a list of good places recommended by Lucas Behnke, a Kauai
Forest Bird Recovery Project field ecologist, to go birding on your own and see
native birds.
1. Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge (North Shore): Easily accessible
birding for seabirds.
2. Kokee State Park (High Elevation): Look for akekee near the intersection of
the Alakai Swamp and Pihea Trails. Elepaio, apapane and amakihi can all be found
along the nature trail that starts behind the Kokee Museum.
3. Hanapepe Salt Ponds and Kawaiele Sand Mine Bird Sanctuary west of Kekaha
(West Side): Great for native water birds, like Hawaiian stilts, and winter
migrants. Both are drive-up and step-out-of-the-car type of birding.
4. Any golf course on the island: Great for nene, which should be easily found
from the parking lots, clubhouse or along any water body.
5. Poipu (South Shore): The trail between Kukuiula and Spouting Horn is an easy
walk with some water birds like Hawaiian stilts and Hawaiian ducks, and the
occasional nene.
Scientists are struggling to
explain
a catastrophic decline
in the number of birds
whose annual visits
are part of
our folklore
Sunday 24 April 2011
The Observer
Robin McKie, science editor
This article appeared on p12
of the Main section section of the Observer
on
Sunday 24 April 2011.
It was published on guardian.co.uk
at 00.06 BST on Sunday 24 April 2011
Some of Britain's most cherished spring visitors are disappearing in their
thousands. Ornithologists say species such as the cuckoo, nightingale and turtle
dove are undergoing catastrophic drops in numbers, although experts are puzzled
about the exact reasons for these declines.
The warning, from the RSPB, comes as the songs of the cuckoo, nightingale and
wood warbler herald the return of spring. In the case of the cuckoo – "the
simple bird that thinks two notes a song", according to the poet William Henry
Davies – its call has become synonymous with the arrival of warm weather. It is
the quintessential bird of spring.
Yet there is now a real risk that, with other migrant birds from Africa, it may
no longer make its annual appearance in our woodlands, said Dr Danaë Sheehan, a
senior RSPB conservation scientist. The call of the cuckoo could be silenced in
the near future unless scientists can unravel the causes of the drastic decline
in their population, she said.
According to Sheehan, numbers of migrant birds from Africa have declined
dramatically in the UK since 1995. For turtle doves the figure is 71%;
nightingales, 53%; and cuckoos, 44%. "That is a very significant and very
worrying decline," she added.
"The real problem is that there are so many different possible causes for these
losses – which makes it difficult to tease out the factors involved in their
decline and to prepare plans to put things right.
"These losses could be the result of changes in farmland use in Britain which
are affecting the way these birds breed when they arrive here in spring. Or they
could be due to the spread of human populations in Africa and the destruction of
natural habitats where they make their homes in winter.
"Climate change is almost certainly involved as well. Our problem is to unravel
those different causes and assess how they interact."
In a bid to explain what is happening, the RSPB and groups such as the British
Trust for Ornithology have launched a series of projects in the UK and in
Africa. These include new surveys of numbers of different species arriving in
Britain as well as studies, in Africa, of sites that provide winter homes for
these birds. Targets will include the cuckoo, nightingale and the turtle dove as
well as the wood warbler, garden warbler, whinchat, and pied flycatcher as well
as the swift – another popular visitor. Its numbers have dropped 30% since 1995.
"The global pressure for land has now become extreme, and it is starting to have
real implications for long-distance migrant birds," said Andre Farrar, the
RSPB's campaigns manager. "Climate change – which affects timings of breeding
cycles – is another critical factor."
However, the work will be tricky thanks to the complexity of bird migration
between Africa and Britain. For a start, these visitors have their winter homes
in very different areas. Some birds, like the nightingale, cuckoo and swift,
winter in humid western regions – including Nigeria and Ghana – while others,
like the turtle dove and yellow wagtail, winter in the dry Sahel area in
countries such as Chad. "Both regions are affected by rising populations of
humans, but in ways that will have subtly different effects on land use and on
individual bird species," said Sheehan.
On top of changes of land use in their wintering grounds, scientists suspect
that many migrants are finding it increasingly difficult to feed themselves when
they come to breed in Britain. For example, cuckoos eat large moths and it is
known that in recent years numbers of such insects have dropped significantly in
the UK.
There is almost certainly a significant problem caused by climate change.
Migrant birds arrive and breed and then have chicks at times which are no longer
synchronised with the best periods when food, such as insects, is available.
Again this is likely to have a serious impact on population numbers.
On top of these factors, turtle doves and nightingales are affected by the loss
of sandy scrubland on which they like to breed. Intensification of farming has
seen major reductions in this sort of habitat and this has had an impact on
migrant birds, added Sheehan.
There are factors involved from outside either Africa or Britain. "Adding insult
to injury to the effects of this land use and climate change is the massive
slaughter that takes place in spring and autumn when birds, flying from and to
Africa, cross islands in the Mediterranean Sea, such as Cyprus and Malta," added
Farrar. "There they are shot, in their hundreds of thousands, by hunters – who
just enjoy killing them for the 'sport'. It is against EU law, but that doesn't
stop it happening."
Migrant birds from Africa clearly face a barrage of problems, although the
effect of these will differ from species to species. The crucial point, say
ornithologists, is that some of the most welcome visitors to the United Kingdom
are now disappearing.
"Some of these birds are closely woven into our culture, like the cuckoo," added
Farrar. "Others – like the spotted flycatcher, which specialises in living in
old leafy churchyards and large gardens – are less well known but loved
passionately by small groups of people who are very possessive about them and
who watch out carefully for their return every year.
"And that sums up our attitude to migrant birds. We are at the northern edge of
their ranges. However, they breed here and we identify them as being British,
though it could just as easily be argued they are African or simply birds of the
wild skies. Nevertheless, we have a deep, complex relationships with these
creatures."
This point was backed by Sheehan. "These birds arrive in our countryside just as
the first good weather arrives. We associate them with spring and warmth. That
is why they appear so often in folklore. They are part of our culture – which
makes the declines in their numbers so worrying. We have got to find out what is
going on as soon as possible.
"Many people will hear their first cuckoo of the year this weekend. It is not
guaranteed they will be able to do that 10 years from now."
In 1812,
John James Audubon filled a wooden box with about 200 of his paintings of
American birds and left it with a relative for safekeeping while he went off on
one of his many trips. When he returned to retrieve the paintings, he discovered
to his horror that they had been destroyed, shredded by nesting rats.
As he described it later, his first reaction was “a burning heat” in his brain,
a headache so intense it kept him awake for days.
Then, though, he reconsidered. “I felt pleased,” he wrote, “that I might now
make better drawings than before.”
We know the results — Audubon turned himself into the most famous practitioner
of what some call “bird art.” Copies of his “Birds of America,” published
section by section in the mid-19th century, are among the most valuable
illustrated books.
But Audubon was only one of a number of naturalist artists who have made their
careers portraying birds. And in his day, before cameras or reliable
preservation techniques, bird artists gathered and recorded important scientific
information about the ornithological world. For him, his colleagues and rivals,
the ability to observe their surroundings and draw what they saw was not just a
prerequisite for making and selling art. Observation and illustration were
important tools of research.
Four new books illuminate the confluence of science, art and ornithology, which
flowered perhaps most brilliantly in Audubon’s day, although it had ancient
roots. The art of depicting birds emerged in the cave culture of Paleolithic
times. The first drawing of a bird (that we know about) was of an owl, found on
the wall of a cave in Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, in 1994.
And though sketching may have given way to the high-tech tools of zoology, the
authors of three books agree that drawing and painting continue to be superior
tools for people seeking to learn about birds. If you find that hard to believe,
consider that many contemporary birders prefer the field guide drawings of Roger
Tory Peterson and David Allen Sibley to guides relying on photography.
All three of these books are filled with glorious images of drawn and painted
birds, fascinating anecdotes about how the images were made and odd facts.
Edward Lear, for example, the master of the limerick, was an accomplished bird
artist who considered this work his true calling.
But there is much more than beautiful images and bird-art trivia. In “Humans,
Nature and Birds: Science Art From Cave Walls to Computer Screens” (Yale
University Press, July 2008), Darryl Wheye, a California artist, and Donald
Kennedy, an ecologist and emeritus president of Stanford, take a close look at
humanity’s relationship with birds. Ms. Wheye and Dr. Kennedy, also the former
editor of the journal Science, have collected bird art ranging from the cave
painting of an owl to a portrait of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which appeared
on the cover of Science in 2005 to accompany a report, much criticized since,
that an ivorybill had been observed in an Arkansas swamp and that the species
was not extinct after all.
They arrange this art not in chronological order or by species or geography, but
in a kind of virtual “gallery” that tells, room by room, of birds as symbols, a
natural resource, exemplars of important biological principles or as species
useful in encouraging conservation. And they describe art that reveals bird
behavior — individual, intraspecies and interspecies, including relations
between birds and people.
Among other things, they note that birds as icons are a contradictory lot. They
embody wisdom (owls) and stupidity (dodos); peace (doves) and war (eagles);
freedom (in flight) and enforced propriety (when caged).
“Birds: The Art of Ornithology” (Rizzoli, April 2008), by Jonathan Elphick, an
eminent British ornithologist, is a more conventional, and exhaustive, survey of
bird art from the work of medieval weavers to artists painting today. If your
knowledge of bird art is limited to Audubon, Sibley and Peterson, the parade of
characters who walk across its pages will be a revelation.
Lear, for example, was celebrated for his art, Mr. Elphick writes, describing
his lithograph of a gaudy scarlet macaw as illustrating “the individual
character he gave to his bird subjects without sacrificing scientific
objectivity.” But Lear’s prosperous family lost its money when he was a child,
and he struggled as a bird artist for patronage and other support. Worse, his
vision faded, immensely complicating his work.
Audubon prided himself on working “from life,” but, like his contemporaries, he
usually worked with birds he killed. When he could not get a live golden eagle
to hold still, Mr. Elphick recounts, he contemplated letting it go. Instead he
stabbed it through the heart and posed it to produce one of his most famous
images: a golden eagle carrying off a snowshoe hare.
Drawing and painting were almost the least of the troubles of early bird
artists. Field trips in those days were rugged. And once they had made their
art, the artists often faced formidable difficulty reproducing it in
high-quality (and marketable) form. In the early 19th century, for example,
reliable printing houses were few and far between.
How Audubon’s art developed is a theme of an introductory essay by the historian
Richard Rhodes in “Audubon: Early Drawings” (Harvard University Press, September
2008), which reproduces one of the few extant collections of his early work, the
Harris collection at Harvard. These drawings are interesting not just because of
their seemingly naïve charm, but also because of their great technical distance
from the work produced in “Birds of America.” In this collection, the birds
appear in more or less stilted poses, usually in profile. They appear almost
always on an otherwise empty page. Audubon offers terse notes to describe their
habits, a practice he dropped in “Birds.”
Even today, scientists sometimes consult Audubon, Lear and other early
practitioners of bird art to learn about extinct species like the Carolina
parakeet, the subject of another famous Audubon image. Or they look for hints of
how the habitats or habits of surviving species might have changed since the
18th or 19th centuries.
These books might seem to make the case that photography has nothing to
contribute to the science and art of ornithology. But a fourth new book, “Egg
and Nest” (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, September 2008), by
Rosamond Purcell, Linnea S. Hall and René Corado, is a most effective rebuttal.
It collects photographs that Rosamond Purcell made at the Western Foundation of
Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, Calif., a natural history collection
specializing in the eggs and nests of birds from around the world.
In an essay, the naturalist Bernd Heinrich offers his explanation for, as he
calls it, “the allure of eggs and nests.” Ms. Hall, the director of the
foundation, and Mr. Corado, its collections manager, offer detailed explanations
of which bird laid each egg or built each nest and descriptions of how
collectors gather specimens and preserve eggs by “blowing” out their contents.
They even provide an X-ray of a gravid kiwi, its body seemingly filled by an
egg, and explain that kiwis lay one egg at a time, “the largest eggs relative to
their body size of any living birds.”
If you are wondering why anyone would spend a life in a pursuit as eccentric as
collecting eggs and nests, Ms. Purcell’s work will tell you. She selected a
range of specimens, eggs brightly colored and plain, and nests made
conventionally of twigs or of materials as bizarre as nails. Then she
photographed them in natural light.
Her luminous results explain without words why people have been collecting eggs
and nests for centuries.
CHAPARRAL,
N.M. — After two weeks of preparation, 150 officers, backed up by a helicopter,
slipped into this sleepy desert town. Their focus was not illegal immigration or
drug smuggling, but a less pressing crime: cockfighting.
But when they raided what was billed as the Christmas Cockfighting Derby in
December expecting to find 300 cockfighters, they found fewer than a dozen
people. The cockfighters had been tipped off, the police said, and the officers
issued tickets for four misdemeanors before seizing 12 shrieking roosters.
Last year, New Mexico became the 49th state to make cockfighting illegal.
(Louisiana will become the last state when a ban there takes effect in August.)
The state has devoted vast resources to ending the sport, but with only one
misdemeanor conviction thus far, it continues unabated in hidden venues,
cockfighters and law enforcement officials say.
And light penalties — a first offense is a petty misdemeanor — have not only
failed to stop the fights, they continue to attract cockfighters from four of
New Mexico’s five neighboring states, where the sport is a felony.
“It seems they’re always one step ahead of us,” said Robyn Gojkovich, who in May
became the state’s first full-time animal control investigator.
Ed Lowry, 51, a paunchy rooster breeder from Chaparral, agreed.
“They ain’t shut nothing down,” said Mr. Lowry, who has not been charged, even
though his truck and computers were seized in the December raid.
Mr. Lowry, who still possesses his prized bloodlines, said he constantly turns
down invitations to fight. As a director of the New Mexico Gamefowl Association,
a nonprofit cockfighting advocacy group, he has taken up fighting in the courts,
where appeals claiming tribal, religious and cultural sovereignty have failed to
win exemptions from the ban.
“A gamecock shows me what an American should be like,” he said. “You defend to
the death.”
To avoid the police, law enforcement officers say, promoters have relocated the
fights from large arenas to clandestine sites on sprawling properties. Lookouts
are stationed atop dusty mesas, and speakers, which in the past blared mariachi
music, now carry feeds from police scanners.
But law enforcement officials are not giving up. They insist their aggressive
operations — the raids, the full-time investigator, a special cockfighting task
force — are sending a message in a war of attrition.
Nationally, though, it appears that animal rights advocates are winning that
war, and they have been helped by a high-profile case. The conviction of the
football star Michael Vick in a dogfighting operation in 2007 has pushed animal
cruelty cases to the fore.
Circulation of the country’s largest trade magazine for cockfighting, The
Gamecock, has fallen to 8,000 from about 14,000 over the last decade as states
strengthened penalties for animal cruelty. And the wider cockfighting community,
once an $80 million industry in the state, is suffering. In New Mexico, profits
at feed stores and hotels in cockfighting strongholds are down as much as 70
percent, owners said.
Some police officers in this state say the pressure for stepped-up enforcement
from the animal rights lobby has become so intense that resources are being
diverted from more serious crimes, like drunken driving and amphetamine abuse.
For years the state’s governor, Bill Richardson, a Democrat, avoided the issue.
In 2006, Jay Leno ridiculed him on the “Tonight Show,” for saying there were
strong arguments on both sides of the issue. At that time, the sport was already
a felony in 33 states. But in March 2007, Mr. Richardson signed the measure
outlawing the sport. He was widely criticized as only getting behind the
legislation because he was then running for president.
“You can’t go on the national stage and have people find out you have no problem
with a bloody sport,” said Sheriff Darren White of Bernalillo County, where
officers issued citations for two cockfighting misdemeanors in a raid on June
21.
Mr. Richardson’s office said he would not be available to discuss the issue.
Sheriff White, a Republican who is running for Congress, said the ban has
transformed public opinion on animal cruelty issues. Animal rights advocates
agree.
“New Mexico is on the verge of having a modern culture,” said Heather Ferguson,
the legislative director for Animal Protection of New Mexico, an animal-rights
lobbying group. Ms. Ferguson said a newly established animal cruelty hot line
was receiving about 90 calls every two weeks.
As public support rises, so do costs. The Chaparral raid cost the four counties
involved more than $25,000, officials said. And several high-ranking police
officers, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to talk
to reporters, said that while they oppose cockfighting they are frustrated at
how politicians are disproportionately emphasizing the crime.
“We don’t even investigate misdemeanors on other crimes,” one officer said. “We
laugh at these investigations.” Of one cockfighting raid he said: “We wasted
$10,000 on a recent misdemeanor. I’d rather use that for a D.U.I. checkpoint and
take 20 people off the road in the three hours and save lives over chickens. I
feel good when we save chickens, but whoop-de-do, a misdemeanor?”
Others defended the raids, citing ties between cockfighting and other criminal
enterprises, like illegal gambling.
“You aren’t going to take down a cockfighting ring with two or three people,”
Sheriff White said. “This is not a friendly card game. There’s a lot more going
on.”
Ms. Ferguson said she would like to see even more legal action on the issue. She
is seeking $200,000 in additional state money to finance positions like a
full-time prosecutor for animal cruelty cases. In addition, she is working to
make cockfighting a felony in New Mexico. Over the next year, Animal Protection
of New Mexico will lobby for about $1.1 million for three new animal custody
facilities that would be completed by 2010.
For 16 years, Richard and Louisa Lopez operated a 310-seat cockfighting arena at
their farm in Luis Lopez, N.M. The $30,000 they earned annually from the
operation helped subsidize their farm expenses, and send their children to
college. Last month, they used the arena for their family reunion and a baby
shower.
“We don’t have money to buy diesel sometimes,” Mr. Lopez said. “And this is the
place that kept my farm going.”
In January, the courts dismissed a suit by the New Mexico Gamefowl Association
claiming economic devastation. Ms. Gojkovich, the animal control investigator,
was hardly sympathetic.
“You need to go find a job at Wal-Mart,” she said.
March 30,
2008
The New York Times
By BRIDGET STUTCHBURY
Woodbridge, Ontario
THOUGH a
consumer may not be able to tell the difference, a striking red and blue Thomas
the Tank Engine made in Wisconsin is not the same as one manufactured in China —
the paint on the Chinese twin may contain dangerous levels of lead. In the same
way, a plump red tomato from Florida is often not the same as one grown in
Mexico. The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter
and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often
be illegal in the United States.
In this case, the victims are North American songbirds. Bobolinks, called skunk
blackbirds in some places, were once a common sight in the Eastern United
States. In mating season, the male in his handsome tuxedo-like suit sings
deliriously as he whirrs madly over the hayfields. Bobolink numbers have
plummeted almost 50 percent in the last four decades, according to the North
American Breeding Bird Survey.
The birds are being poisoned on their wintering grounds by highly toxic
pesticides. Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies,
captured bobolinks feeding in rice fields in Bolivia and took samples of their
blood to test for pesticide exposure. She found that about half of the birds had
drastically reduced levels of cholinesterase, an enzyme that affects brain and
nerve cells — a sign of exposure to toxic chemicals.
Since the 1980s, pesticide use has increased fivefold in Latin America as
countries have expanded their production of nontraditional crops to fuel the
demand for fresh produce during winter in North America and Europe. Rice farmers
in the region use monocrotophos, methamidophos and carbofuran, all agricultural
chemicals that are rated Class I toxins by the World Health Organization, are
highly toxic to birds, and are either restricted or banned in the United States.
In countries like Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador, researchers have found that
farmers spray their crops heavily and repeatedly with a chemical cocktail of
dangerous pesticides.
In the mid-1990s, American biologists used satellite tracking to follow
Swainson’s hawks to their wintering grounds in Argentina, where thousands of
them were found dead from monocrotophos poisoning. Migratory songbirds like
bobolinks, barn swallows and Eastern kingbirds are suffering mysterious
population declines, and pesticides may well be to blame. A single application
of a highly toxic pesticide to a field can kill seven to 25 songbirds per acre.
About half the birds that researchers capture after such spraying are found to
suffer from severely depressed neurological function.
Migratory birds, modern-day canaries in the coal mine, reveal an environmental
problem hidden to consumers. Testing by the United States Food and Drug
Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are
three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for
pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not
all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests
by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of
pesticides in their blood. American consumers can discourage this poisoning by
avoiding foods that are bad for the environment, bad for farmers in Latin
America and, in the worst cases, bad for their own families.
What should you put on your bird-friendly grocery list? Organic coffee, for one
thing. Most mass-produced coffee is grown in open fields heavily treated with
fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. In contrast, traditional
small coffee farmers grow their beans under a canopy of tropical trees, which
provide shade and essential nitrogen, and fertilize their soil naturally with
leaf litter. Their organic, fair-trade coffee is now available in many coffee
shops and supermarkets, and it is recommended by the Audubon Society, the
American Bird Conservancy and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.
Organic bananas should also be on your list. Bananas are typically grown with
one of the highest pesticide loads of any tropical crop. Although bananas
present little risk of pesticide ingestion to the consumer, the environment
where they are grown is heavily contaminated.
When it comes to nontraditional Latin American crops like melons, green beans,
tomatoes, bell peppers and strawberries, it can be difficult to find any that
are organically grown. We should buy these foods only if they are not imported
from Latin America.
Now that spring is here, we take it for granted that the birds’ cheerful songs
will fill the air when our apple trees blossom. But each year, as we continue to
demand out-of-season fruits and vegetables, we ensure that fewer and fewer
songbirds will return.
Bridget Stutchbury,
a professor of biology at York University in Toronto,
December 1,
2007
The New York Times
By ANTHONY DePALMA
Relentless
sprawl, invasive species and global warming are threatening an increasing number
of bird species in the United States, pushing a quarter of them — including
dozens in New York and New Jersey — toward extinction, according to a new study
by the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy.
The study, called WatchList 2007, categorized 178 species in the United States
as being threatened, an increase of about 10 percent from 2002, when Audubon’s
last study was conducted. Of the 178 species on the list, about 45 spend at
least part of the year in this region.
Among the most threatened is the rare Bicknell’s thrush, a native of the
Catskill and Adirondack highlands whose winter habitat in the Caribbean is
disappearing. Although less at risk, the wood thrush — whose distinctive song
was once emblematic of the Northeast’s rugged woodlands — is on the list because
a combination of acid rain and sprawl has damaged its habitat and caused its
numbers to decline precipitously over the last four decades.
The Audubon list, which was released Wednesday, overlaps the federal
government’s official endangered species list in some cases. But it also
includes a number of bird species that are not recognized as endangered by the
federal government but that biologists fear are in danger of becoming extinct.
“We’re concerned that there’s been almost a moratorium on the listing of
endangered birds over the last seven years under this administration,” Greg
Butcher, Audubon’s bird conservation director and a co-author of the new study,
said in a telephone interview. Placing a threatened bird on the new watch list
can bring it the kind of attention it needs to survive even if the federal
government does not act, he said.
“When we pay attention to these birds and do the things we know need to be done,
these birds recover,” Mr. Butcher said. “All these birds have a chance to
rebound if we put the right actions in motion.”
Those actions include channeling new development to established areas, being
vigilant about new invasive species that can devastate habitats and limiting
carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate change.
The national watch list is divided into two categories: 59 species, including
the whooping crane and the lesser prairie-chicken, are on the “red list” for
species that are declining rapidly and facing major threats; 119 are on the
“yellow list” for species that are declining or rare but are not yet endangered.
In New York, 10 birds — including the Henslow’s sparrow — are on the red list.
The cerulean warbler, the short-eared owl and 35 other birds are on the yellow
list. New Jersey’s list includes many of the same birds as New York’s. The count
in Connecticut is similar, Mr. Butcher said.
The region’s coastal location raises issues of particular concern. Mr. Butcher
said he was especially worried about beach birds like the piping plover, the
least tern and the black skimmer, as well as birds whose habitat is the region’s
disappearing salt marshes. They include the saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow and
the clapper rail. And he noted that migratory shore birds, including the red
knot and the semipalmated sandpiper, would face increasing difficulties in this
region.
“As sea level rises, and the salt marshes disappear, these species don’t have
anyplace to go,” Mr. Butcher said. “In New York and New Jersey, so many people
live close to the coast that we do what we can to safeguard people but we don’t
necessarily protect the natural habitat.”
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The populations of nearly two dozen common
American birds -- the fence-sitting meadowlark, the frenetic Rufous hummingbird
and the whippoorwill with its haunting call -- are half what they were 40 years
ago, a new analysis found.
The northern bobwhite and its familiar wake-up whistle once seemed to be
everywhere in the East. Last Christmas, volunteer bird counters could find only
three of them and only 18 Eastern meadowlarks in Massachusetts.
Twenty different common bird species -- those with populations more than half a
million and covering a wide range -- have seen populations fall at least in half
since 1967, according to a study by the National Audubon Society. The bird group
compared databases for 550 species from two different bird surveys: its own
Christmas bird count and the U.S. Geological Survey's breeding bird survey in
June.
Some of the birds, such as the evening grosbeak, used to be so plentiful that
people would complain about how they crowded bird-feeders and finished off
50-pound sacks of sunflower seeds in just a couple days. But the colorful and
gregarious grosbeak's numbers have plummeted 78 percent in the past 40 years.
''It was an amazing phenomena all through the '70s that's just disappeared. It's
just a really dramatic thing because it was in people's back yards and (now)
it's not in people's back yards,'' said study author Greg Butcher, Audubon's
bird conservation director.
Many of the species in decline depend on open grassy habitats that are
disappearing because of suburban sprawl. Climate change and invasive species are
to blame, too, he said.
''Most of these we don't expect will go extinct,'' Butcher said. ''We think they
reflect other things that are happening in the environment that we should be
worried about.''
Audubon Board Chairman Carol Browner, former U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency administrator, called the declines ''a warning signal.''
''We are concerned. Is it an emergency? No, but concerns can quickly become an
emergency,'' Browner said.
Compared to 1967, there are 432 million fewer of these bird species, including
the northern pintail, greater scaup, boreal chickadee, common tern, loggerhead
shrike, field sparrow, grasshopper sparrow, snow bunting, black-throated
sparrow, lark sparrow, common grackle, American bittern, horned lark, little
blue heron and ruffed grouse.
''Things we all think of as familiar backyard birds ... they appear in books and
children's stories and suddenly some of them are way less familiar than they
should be,'' said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell ornithology lab, who
was not part of the study.
The northern bobwhite had the biggest drop among common birds. In 1967, there
were 31 million of the plump ground-loving bird. Now they number closer to 5.5
million.
''If you look in the northeast, it's almost gone from New England and pretty
much New York as well...,'' Butcher said.
In some cases, there are still plenty of birds left, despite large surprising
drop-offs. The common grackle used to be as plentiful as people in 1967, with
both human and grackle populations hovering around 200 million. Now the grackle
is down to 73 million and humans are up to 300 million.
But while these common birds are in decline, others are taking their place or
even elbowing them aside. The wild turkey, once in deep trouble, is growing at a
rate of 14 percent a year. The double-crested cormorant, pushed nearly to
extinction by DDT, is growing at a rate of 8 percent a year and populations of
the pesky Canada goose increase by 7 percent yearly.
Many of the birds that are disappearing are specialists, while the thriving ones
are generalists that do well in urban sprawl and all kinds of environments,
Butcher said. In a way it's the Wal-Mart-ization of America's skies, he said.
''The robins, the Carolina wrens, the blue jays, the crows, those kinds of
birds, are doing just fine, thank you,'' Butcher said. ''They really get along
in suburban habitats, most of them even like city parks, so they are not as
susceptible to the human changes in environment.''
But nothing matches the take-over ability of one invading bird.
''Right now the Eurasian collared-dove is conquering America,'' Butcher said. A
dove-like bird that first entered Florida in the 1980s, it now is the most
prevalent bird in the Sunshine State and is in more than 30 states.
''Soon you'll be seeing Eurasian collared-doves in any city in the world,'' he
said.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Audubon Society examined 40
years of U.S. winter and summer bird count records and found which common bird
populations
are decreasing most and which are increasing most:
