Free-roaming Cats Bad for Birds
8 September 2006 – American Bird
Conservancy (ABC) has published a new report that says free-roaming cats
are bad for birds.
The report, Impacts of Feral and
Free-ranging Cats on Bird Species of Conservation Concern: A Five-State
Review of New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, and Hawaii,
analyzes for the first time the effects cats are having on some
of America’s most at-risk bird species at cat predation hotspots.
The five-state review cites troubling
threats to endangered species such as the Florida Scrub-jay, Piping
Plover, and Hawaiian Petrel, and other key birds such as the Painted
Bunting, Least Tern, and Black Rail.
The report highlights the growing trend of so-called “managed” feral cat
colonies that use Trap/Neuter/Release techniques and their effects on
birds, particularly at state and Globally Important Bird Areas.
The evidence is clear, the report shows
– free-roaming cats are bad for birds.
The report says state and federal
resources for controlling feral cats must be significantly increased to
achieve the goals identified in Endangered Species Recovery Plans and
State Comprehensive Wildlife Conservation Strategies.
The report is available by
clicking here.
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Tags
Record Epic Bird Migration
8 September 2006 – The annual
40,000-mile trip around the Pacific Ocean by a seabird species appears
to be the longest migration recorded by electronic tracking.
According to an item in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, the Sooty Shearwaters' journey took them from breeding
colonies in New Zealand to winter feeding sites in Japan, Alaska and
California. The migration path covered the entire Pacific region and
took about 200 days to complete, say the scientists who conducted the
research.
Between January and March 2005, 33
birds at two breeding colonies in New Zealand were fitted with
transmitting tags weighing 6 grams. In autumn, 20 tags were recovered
when the birds returned to their burrows at the breeding grounds.
Nineteen of the tags had successfully recorded the birds’ movements.
Data showed some birds had travelled up to 910 kilometres a day and had
dived to depths of 68 metres for food.
Scott Shaffer, a research biologist at
the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the paper's lead author,
says researchers were surprised the birds went to specific places in the
northern Pacific and stayed there for the remainder of the migration,
and then came back to New Zealand. It was previously thought the birds
did a sweep of the North Pacific before heading back south.
The birds made a prolonged stopover at
just one location in either Japan, Alaska, or California.
The data also confirmed the birds' migration path covered the
entire Pacific region in a massive figure-eight pattern. The pattern was
likely the result of the birds using the global wind system and being
influenced by the Coriolis Effect.
Although the Sooty Shearwater global
population is an estimated 20 million, Dr. Shaffer says declines in
their number could be a useful indicator of impacts of climate change or
over-fishing. If the birds are travelling all that way, food must be
available or it will be very difficult for them to recover and return.
Previous studies indicated the population of Sooty Shearwaters off the
coast of California had declined dramatically, a situation attributed to
a decline in the amount of food resulting from warming oceans.
Conservation Saving
Birds from Extinction
24 August 2006, BirdLife International
– A BirdLife-authored paper finds that conservation action saved 16 bird
species from extinction between 1994 and 2004.
Although they represent just 1.3% of
the world’s threatened birds, these successes demonstrate that, given
political will and resources, we have the knowledge and tools to turn
back the tide of extinction.
In their paper, How many bird extinctions have we prevented?,
BirdLife authors Stuart Butchart, Alison Stattersfield, and Nigel Collar
explain how they identified these 16 cases. It is the first time anyone
has attempted to quantify the results of global conservation action in
this way for any group of organisms.
The majority had populations of fewer than 100 birds in 1994, with only
four known breeding pairs of Chatham Island (Taiko Pterodroma
magentae), just four breeding female Norfolk Island Green Parrots (Cyanoramphus
cookie), and five pairs of Mauritius Parakeet (Psittacula eques),
three of which had bred without success.
Conservation actions for 11 species
were implemented through a mixture of government and non-governmental
organizations, with governments alone responsible for the rest. BirdLife
International contributed to action for seven species.
“By 2004 some species had undergone
very significant population growth,” Butchart explained. “Norfolk Island
Green Parrot increased almost 10-fold from 32 to 37 individuals to 200
to 300 individuals, and Mauritius Parakeet 10-fold from five pairs to 55
pairs.
However, these 16 species are not a
representative sample of the world’s threatened bird species, since 10
are confined to islands, where small-scale action can be more effective,
while more than half of all threatened birds are continental and often
affected by broader-scale habitat loss and degradation.
Three-quarters of the species could also be considered “charismatic”
(parrots, raptors, pigeons, large waterbirds etc.) while just 48% of all
Critically Endangered birds would qualify. Butchart suspects that
charismatic species may capture conservationists’ attention more easily,
and it is certainly easier to raise funds for them and to change public
opinion.
Sadly, the improvement in the status of
these species is also atypical. At least 45% of threatened bird species
are judged to have deteriorated in status between 2000 and 2004.
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Global Warming Threatening Gray Jays
21
August 2006 – Global warming could be killing off North
America’s Gray Jays, according to researchers from Ohio State
University.
Thomas Waite, who has conducted a
25-year study of the birds along with Canada’s Dan Strickland, says Gray
Jays that store frozen food to help survive icy winters are dying out in
parts of North America because global warming is rotting their hoards.
The jay's dependence on natural
refrigeration – of food ranging from berries to insects – make it an
exception to the general rule that animals and plants survive better
during milder winters.
"The hoards are turning into a bad
investment because the food is rotting," Waite said in an interview with
the Reuters news agency.
"The birds are getting less food and
they may also suffer from food poisoning from eating rotten food," he
told Reuters.
Gray Jays are about 30 centimetres
long, roughly the size of a blackbird or American Robin. Waite and
Strickland say the birds are in danger of dying out on the southern edge
of their range, mostly southern Canada but also parts of the United
States including Maine, Vermont, and Rocky Mountain states.
Gray Jays can stash away tens of
thousands of food items – blueberries, beetles, even strips of meat from
a carcass of a moose killed by wolves – in pine trees around their
territories to help them get through the winters.
They nest earlier than most other birds
and rely on stores of frozen food to feed young, which typically hatch
in April. "Jays can sit on eggs or even
have nestlings with snow about," Waite said.
The scientists found that birds had
more young in years after a cold autumn than a warm autumn and that
birds living near an extra source of winter food, such as a bird feeder
by a house, did better after a warm autumn than those in a remote
forest.
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