What the HELL is going on?? In the last two weeks, there have been two separate die-offs of red-winged blackbirds. More than 80,000 dead fish washed up on the banks of the Arkansas river.
No one knows the cause for certain. In reality, it isn’t a new occurrence. These sorts of things happen pretty often. This article postulates that technology is to blame for the panic. It isn’t necessarily that more die-offs are happening, we just have more knowledge of them. There are lots of factors that can contribute to an isolated incident. Things like weather, disease, pesticides and poisoning are all culprits. If they are truly natural occurrences, then that isn’t very alarming. If they are caused by human activity…that could be a larger problem.
Mass die-0ffs get a lot of attention because they are a large-scale event. They most commonly occur in animals that travel in large groups. The real problem is the extinction of an entire species that goes unnoticed because it isn’t such a dramatic event. It isn’t as glamorous or exciting, so people don’t talk about it as much. Several other species are seeing their numbers decline: The four common species of bumblebees in the United States have declined by an estimated 96% in recent decades. Honeybees have disappeared at an alarming rate for years. Over a million bats have died in the last five years due to White-Nose Syndrome (a fungal infection of the skin). Three subspecies of tigers have gone extinct in the last sixty years and the five remaining subspecies are all critically endangered.
Even if humans were not involved in these incidents, I don’t think we can argue that we are causing plenty of other problems. We are responsible for habitat destruction, pollution, consuming products that are not eco-conscious, participating in the illegal pet trade….the list goes on. If anything is going to change, we have to become informed and make different choices. I realize that not everyone will be interested in the same causes, but pick a cause and learn about it. Care about something.
