The media frenzy started by the mass death of some red-winged blackbirds in Arkansas was based on ignorance. Such mass kills of wildlife occur all the time in nature and have natural causes, biologists say.
"It wasn't a secret government spraying program, Martians or gas seeping out of the New Madrid fault that killed the 5,000 or so blackbirds that died New Year's Eve in Beebe, Ark. It was someone shooting off professional grade fireworks in a residential district, scaring the night-blind birds out of their roost into a 25-mph flight that ran them into houses, signs and even the ground, says Karen Rowe, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist."
"Formerly rare beak deformities are spreading rapidly among crows in southwestern B.C. and Puget Sound, according to researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey."
The aging oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico -- pipelines, wells, platforms, and other rigs -- could well prove another disaster waiting to happen.
"Exposure to mercury pollution could be hitting some wild birds' reproductive prospects hard by causing males to pair with other males."
In a new book, a Dutch researcher says a new class of insecticides, the neonicotinoids, may be causing as much damage to bird populations as the DDT Rachel Carson wrote about in Silent Spring. Some bird populations in Europe are crashing dramatically.
Florida is considering new water quality standards that would force industries and utilities to reduce the amount of pollution they dump into the state's waterways. Industry lobbyists argue against them, claiming they would cost too much. But Department of Environmental Protection officials have questioned industry-written cost estimates.
"Scientists have observed the highest rate of beak abnormalities ever recorded in wild bird populations in Alaska and the Northwest, a study by two federal scientists said." The cause is undetermined, but an environmental cause is suspected.
"The Environmental Protection Agency denied on Thursday a petition by several environmental groups to ban lead in fishing tackle, two months after rejecting the groups' attempt to ban it in hunting ammunition."
"A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to revise a Bush administration recovery plan for the threatened northern spotted owl, and the agency said today it intends to release a draft of the revision next week."
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