Excerpt
Read Op-Ed in NYTimes
What’s
driving this trend is a growing sense of alarm about the dramatic
decline in wildlife, and especially bird, populations, combined with a
new awareness that cats bear a significant share of the blame.
The
National Audubon Society tracks 20 common North American bird species —
Eastern meadowlarks, field sparrows and the like — that are now in
decline. Their numbers have dropped by 68 percent on average since 1967,
because of a variety of factors. In Britain, likewise, farmland bird
populations have plummeted just since 1995, with turtle doves, for
instance, down by 85 percent, cuckoos by 50 percent, and lapwings by 41
percent.
If
these were stock market numbers, people would be leaping from
buildings. But the peculiar thing about what biologists have called “the
second Silent Spring” is that people tend not to hear it.
Read Op-Ed in NYTimes
