Just about all hobbies (and indeed just living!) have an impact on the
environment. Certainly flying to twitch a new bird for your Aussie list has
a fairly high impact (as flying is now thought to be a big contributor to
greenhouse gases) but of course the marginal impact of one body more or less
on a flight that would be going anyway is probably rather small - unlike
driving large 4WDs half way across the country to see a Lapwing.....
In defence of most birders it can be said that we probably are aware of the
issues more than many people, often get involved in lobbying to preserve the
environment and by reporting our sightings (formally or informally) help
scientists to form a picture of what is happening in the world.
If all birders stopped going out birding then there undoubtedly be a small
reduction in greenhouse gas emission (until we took up car racing!) but I
think the long term effects of not having people looking at what is going on
and trying to do something about it would cancel out any good that was done.
On 30/03/07, Chris Lloyd <> wrote:
The recent posts on climate change are an interesting mixed bag.
Churlishly I could see discussions about flights to various exotic locales
to see a "one off" bird for twitching purposes as little different to the
Sydney Morning Herald prattling on about climate change with a large
advertisement for a gas guzzling Jaguar on the same page.
<>
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