Dead birds in Sweden killed by 'external blows' - CNN reports that a "large number of dead birds" fell on the city of Falkoping, Sweden on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Necropsies performed on five of the birds by the Swedish National Veterinary Institute showed blunt force injury killed them, an echo of the New Year's Eve incident when thousands of redwing blackbirds fell or flew into buildings and power lines in Beebe, Arkansas. The following day large numbers of birds falling to the ground and/or flying fatally into objects occurred in Louisiana and Kentucky.
While these occurrences are still unexplained as to cause (other than that the birds were fatally injured by falling to the ground and/or flying into objects), people and news media all over the world are paying close attention to these mysterious bird (and fish) die-offs. Google Maps has a page devoted to tracking the incidents all over the world, and it is getting quite a lot of traffic.
But fear not, Kossacks! The Associated Press has released a story these alarming mass die-offs of fish, birds (and other critters) over the past two weeks, picked up by news media all over the world and cited in full on a host of websites from HuffPost to PhysOrg. It informs concerned people that mass die-offs "happen all the time." We just don't normally notice things like birds that rain from the sky. All this is perfectly normal.
Wildlife officials are now reporting publicly that in the past eight months turkey vultures, ducks, salamanders, bats and various sea birds have dropped dead en masse of various causes, in 95 die-offs on the USGS books for the year just passed. AP reports that an average of 163 such incidents are logged by the feds every year, they just don't generally make the news. Fortunately, we have famed (and somewhat notorious) Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson to properly lay blame for the public interest generated by the past week's worth of mass wildlife die-offs: The Intertoobs Dunnit.
Yep, you heard that right. Despite the steady growth in use of the internet by the public over the past decade and a half, critical mass has only been reached in the earliest days of 2011 in its amazing ability to cause the public to start asking uncomfortable questions of federal and state officials about such things as millions of dead fish in or along waterways and entire flocks of birds dropping out of the sky. Wilson tells us that seeing a photo of dead birds "skews" the view of what is happening in the environment, and raises public concern about mass die-offs of animals that are not considered endangered. Moreover, Wilson bemoans the public concern about mass die-offs of abundant species (caused or not caused by human activities), because he thinks it diverts attention from the slower extinction of thousands of 'more important' species that are being exterminated by human activities. That's something to consider, so I'll consider it here…
Hmmm. The week's mass die-offs are nothing to be concerned about because mass die-offs happen "all the time" and it's not like anybody misses a few thousand blackbirds or a few million bottom-feeders. Now that people ARE aware of it, they need to shrug it off because the species involved - that we know about - are abundant rather than endangered. Meanwhile, we should be MORE concerned about the slow extinctions being caused by human activity. I mean, starlings and blackbirds are agricultural pests the USDA spends considerable money to "cull" by the tens or hundreds of thousands. They usually drop dead in the fields, not on people's houses, and nobody misses them. Somehow, I don't think this is going to be an adequate response to the millions of people worldwide who are concerned that something is going on in the environment we ought to know about.
It seems to me that public concern about this week's mass die-offs should be considered a GOOD thing, because it focuses public attention on the fact that wildlife both abundant and rare are dying in great numbers all over the world, every day. Many of them, according to Wilson, killed by human activity of one variety or another. Which, of course, was the concern the public expressed about these most recent incidents. Lots of people wondered if the fish and bird kills in Arkansas could be connected, which might indicate an environmental hazard originating in the Arkansas River and heading elsewhere with the birds. Or that the birdfalls in Arkansas and Louisiana might be connected by some environmental hazard aloft or in the birds' normal winter food supply. Those are legitimate concerns in this day and age, things that wildlife and public health officials need to investigate when wildlife suffers a mass die-off nobody can readily explain, no matter how abundant the species. Humans are abundant too, mass die-offs generally elicit concern and investigation. I do not think that's too much to ask. Even if the government doesn't like it when they're asked pointed questions or expected to provide honest explanations.
My hope is that now that people are aware of the environmental situation (and let's face it, even starlings, blackbirds and bottom-feeders are part of our environment) they will start keeping track of such things and paying close attention to whatever the government decides is causing them on a case by case basis. And I hope that this awareness leads to more and more people getting involved. They can keep lists and charts, maps and such to document the kills. They can keep up with official findings on the causes, file them in such a way as to be well versed on the most common causes - or at least the most commonly put forward causes of mass die-offs. They can learn about what human activities are involved in the greatest mass extinction event ever encountered by the planet since humans have been around to notice, and support all efforts at addressing and mitigating those issues. And they can start holding people responsible for contributing to the problem in all the ways that human activity contributes to what has been called - by biologists - "the greatest mass-extinction event" since dinosaurs.
That would be a very good thing to result from sudden public awareness of what's happening to the critters we share this planet with. Not all of them are lovable, but that shouldn't determine whether or not they all get protection if humans cleaned up their filthy act.
For everyone still interested in learning more and keeping up, the Google Maps page can be accessed via this link:
http://maps.google.com/...
Some of you will also be relieved to know that the Rapture-ite Christians aren't yet packing for their trip to paradise because of all this. Here's some international coverage also blaming these intertoobs for noticing that wildlife is dropping dead all over the place. And finally, Raw Story offers an unintentionally humorous take on the universal 'official' brush-off that it's just cold weather/water causing all this. Even where it's summertime.
Situational Update, FYI.