You may have heard of the proverbial canary in the coal mine - caged birds whose sensitivity to lethal gasses served as an early-warning system to coal miners if the canary died, they knew it was time to flee. The anecdotal evidence from my own yard, it turns out, is everywhere. This study enumerates actual losses of familiar species - ordinary backyard birds like sparrows and swifts, swallows and blue jays.
#How many bugs in a box coal mine update#
It is not an update on the state of rare birds already in trouble. This is not a report that projects future losses on the basis of current trends. Rosenberg, the study’s lead author, told The Times. “We were stunned by the result,” Cornell University’s Kenneth V. The data are both incontrovertible and shocking. That’s 29 percent of all birds on this continent. A new study in the journal Science reports that nearly 3 billion North American birds have disappeared since 1970. I was hoping only to provide a small way station for migrating wildlife, trusting they would be fine once they cleared the affluence zone that is the New Nashville. I wasn’t trying to save the world by putting up nest boxes for the birds or letting the wildflowers in my yard bloom out before mowing. The vast majority of Tennessee is still rural, and for years I told myself that such changes were merely circumstantial, specific to a city undergoing rapid gentrification and explosive growth. NASHVILLE - During the nearly quarter-century that my family has lived in this house, the changes in our neighborhood have become increasingly apparent: fewer trees and wildflowers, fewer bees and butterflies and grasshoppers, fewer tree frogs and songbirds.