(3) Where are the Birds - Dayton S

 Bird have been notorious for their extreme resilience, and abilities to adapt. Birds have long since been a strong sign of ecosystem health. A bird can inhabit more than one ecosystem at a time and still thrive. They migrate over oceans, into climates much unlike their own ecosystem, and yet they do this annually without too many issues. Until recently we couldn’t fathom a serious decline in bird species and population due to there extreme adaptability. So then why are one in eight birds endangered of going extinct?   

    The largest contributor to our bird declinations is pesticides which began being developed in World War II, and which is still destroying bird populations today. This pesticide is called DDT and PCBs. Study’s show that birds not only are being affected directly from these chemicals, but also are also being exposed through their prey. If an insect is unaffected by the pesticide and the bird eats it, it can become just as vulnerable as a bird sprayed with the pesticide. If this wasn’t bad enough they found the chemicals could also be affecting human health, predominately in pregnant women. This means that our future generations my as well be affected

     Though it all seems bad, governments and environmentalists across the globe agree that this is an issue. The United States have already banned these chemicals from being produced and distributed and other countries presumably will follow suit in the near future. This isn’t going to fix the issue but this effectively reduce the extremity of bird population declination by a large margin, which in turn could provide us the time needed to adequately save the bird populations.

Source: National Geographic