Hi Peter,
I'm not sure whether the exact scope of the figures has sunk in yet.
Everyone knows they have declined, so it's possible that people were
mistaking it for old news.
Major wader staging sites such as Broome tend to be fairly buffered against
declines because they tend to absorb birds from satellite areas if there's
room. This means you see birds being lost from the extremities first, and
only when they're really in trouble do you see declines in the major sites.
My other reason for why people might not have reacted is a certain
desensitisation to stunningly bad news in the environmental area. Climate
change, water/major river systems, threatened species, it's all bad news. A
new report saying something we all knew was true to some extent anyway,
without a plan for how to fix it or indeed any real ray of hope at all may
just not get any traction.
Regards,
Chris
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 3:53 PM, Peter Jacoby <> wrote:
>
>
> I was surprised by this forum's apparent lack of interest in the
> recent alarming UNSW research finding that shorebird numbers (both of
> resident and migratory species) have declined by 75% over the last 25
> years.
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080409170333.htm [1]
>
> Should we accept this gloomy picture or was the surveying perhaps
> inadequate to be able to make such a bold statement? Certainly,
> recent summer wader numbers are much lower at sites around Perth, eg
> Alfred Cove and Rottnest Island than they used to be & this is
> confirmed by Birds Australia counts. Has a decline been noted at
> well-documented wader hotspots such as Roebuck Bay and Cairns
> Esplanade?
>
> Regards,
> Peter Jacoby
>
> Perth
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080409170333.htm
> www.birding-aus.org
> birding-aus.blogspot.com
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> send the message:
> unsubscribe
> (in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
> to:
>
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
