Sanctuary Movements, part 3

Endangered Species: Birds Around the World

What is important to realize in drawing such associations is the fact that songbirds (all vocally gymnastic members of the Passeriformes order), comprise some 4000 species, or nearly 40% of all known bird species in the world. To discover such attrition on one small island, is horrendous, but this is the state of the world now: global warming, poaching, utter disarray. Yet hope, which has also been thought of as the most logical conclusion to an illogical world, is our only common tool for jumpstarting some form of ecological redemption. Hence, Emily Dickinson’s extraordinary intuition and importance to the realms of ecological literacy, a phrase easily accessed in terms of many of its component parts and challenges by a singular review of the U.S. Department of Interiors “Facts” for example. Countless documents are accessible for the DOI, obviously, but what should arouse any student’s interest is the well-coordinated corpus of complex responsibilities as well as the inevitable compromises. For example, in delaying the listing of the Greater Sage Grouse as endangered (a flagship [indicator] species Centrocercus urophasianus, that has already lost at least half of its critical sagebrush habitat, with more loss projected) Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar declared “We must find common-sense ways of protecting, restoring and reconnecting the Western lands that are most important to the species’ survival, while responsibly developing much-needed energy resources.”⁵

The complexities are worth exploring in some depth because they rightly point the way, in each instance, to the same need for hope. In the case of avifauna, as of October, 2009, a known 1217 bird species were “deemed endangered or vulnerable to extinction. “New Zealand is in the path of one of eight major global migratory routes, the East Asian-Australasian Flyway that goes from the Arctic, passing through on average 19 nations before touching down in Australia and/or New Zealand.⁶

Given that New Zealand has already lost a known “32 per cent of land and freshwater birds and 18 per cent of sea birds” the pressing realities of bird losses come to our very backyards. But that, in turn, raises a different set of qualifiers, not all hopeless. Migrations of Caribou in Alaska and the Yukon, of Elk in Wyoming and Montana, Wildebeest in East Africa and — the longest of all known mammalian migrations, those of the Gray whales who travel up to 12,000 miles (roundtrip) from Baja California to the Arctic and back, feeding on increasingly-scarce amphipods on the ocean floors — all require places to rest along the way.⁷ A ruby-throated hummingbird weighing less than 5 grams “can use stored fat to fuel a non-stop, 24-hour flight across a 600-mile stretch of open water from the U.S. Gulf coast to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico!”⁸

Part 2: Songbird Migrations
Part 4: Scarce Habitat Areas: Ecological Danger

Footnotes
5. See “Protection is delayed for greater sage grouse,” by Jim Tankersley, Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2010, p.A12. See also www.doi.gov/
6. See “Alexander Gillespie: More effort needed in global strategy to protect birdlife,” October 13, 2009, nzherald.co.nz, …
7. op.cit.,
8. See “Bird Migration Facts,” by Kerry Scanlan, Vicki Piaskowski, Michelle Jacobi and Steve Mahler,” Zoological Society Of Milwaukee,