A precipitous decline in bird populations in France suggests that the silent spring foretold by Rachel Carson more than 50 years ago in her book of that name may yet arrive. The proximate cause of the 33 percent decline in avian populations noted by French researchers over the last 15 years is lack of food.
In practical terms, the birds are not being poisoned as they were in Rachel Carson's day. Rather, their main sources of food, insects, are dropping like, well, flies. The ultimate cause is overuse of pesticides related mostly to agriculture, pesticides which are working all too well in keeping insect populations in check.
Described as "an ecological catastrophe," the decline in bird populations has reached 66 and 70 percent for some species; and the decline is not just in agricultural areas, but also in forested areas outside of agricultural zones.
The findings are not that surprising given previous reports of declines in insect populations of up to 76 percent over that last 27 years in Germany.
While we humans may lament the loss of such beautiful creatures and the degradation of the natural environment, there is an even darker destination which few contemplate. Humans are not just hermetically sealed beings. Instead, we now understand ourselves as agglomerations of cells and other organisms cooperating to keep us alive and healthy. Humans are said to have a microbiome. While the extent of that microbiome is unclear—estimates range from a ratio of 1 microbe for every human cell to 10 microbes per cell—what is clear is that we are completely dependent on thousands of microscopic species.
Of course, we aren't spraying ourselves with pesticides—at least not intentionally. But our dependence on the natural world extends beyond our skin. Of course, we depend on it for food, water, sunlight, and air. What may be hidden from us—because we are only just now beginning to understand the complexity of our connections to the natural world—are myriad dependencies about which we know nothing and which, if severed, could lead to fatal results.
A year ago I asked which species can we humans survive without. We continue to engage in an uncontrolled experiment to find out. The French avian population survey suggests we are surprisingly far along in that project without even realizing the danger not just to wildlife, but to our very survival.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
2 comments:
Nature corrects its mistakes. Monsanto/Bayer does not, to the dismay of all.
I live in upstate New York, until last spring on a hilltop farm, now in the nearby small village. Two summers ago, I noticed that up on the farm there were almost no bugs, no flies, no moths, no dragonflies, few fireflies, virtually no butterflies. I remember playing in a meadow in the Catskill Mountains in my childhood in the 1940s, where clouds of butterflies rose from the wild flowers like so many winged blossoms, an intoxicating abundance so great that we thought nothing of picking them off the flowers and pinning them to cardboard so that we could "collect" them. Most of those species now are gone. Even in the 1970s Monarch butterflies were everywhere in August and September. Now we rejoice to see two or three a summer.
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