Where Have All The Species Gone?

There has been a diminution in species that we've known and read about for some time, maybe long enough that we think it's part of the order of things. As tomorrow is Earth Day, I'd like to point out that the cost of losing species is our own impoverishment, if not outright dangerous.

The beauty of the earth is a gift we need to stop and appreciate. Its variety keeps us and all of its other life forms in balance, and keeps us safe from extremes. We are threatening that variety and beauty.

If you've never been to Yellowstone, you're already taking a chance that it's not going to be there for you, because we weren't there for it.

"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children that we have taught our children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves." These are the words that Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe said in the 1850's. His speech that day is said to be one of the most beautiful and profound statements on the environments ever made. He made these statements when the US government wanted to buy his land and he knew they would destroy it and his way of life.
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Our intervention, our greed and disrespect for nature is taking its toll. The Earth can only take so much and it and everything else has its limits. One can only destroy so much timber, so much clean water, so much wildlife until, at some point; it will be unable to rejuvenate itself.
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Don't kid yourself by saying too bad but there are lots more left. Hundreds of species every year disappear forever from this Earth. You do have the choice to preserve them or to let them be forever gone.

In Europe, particularly in England where birdwatchers anxiously await the spring flocks of our friends with wings, the unspeakable is occurring. Migratory birds are disappearing.

To you readers who follow cabdrollery's Thursday Birdblogging, it will come as no surprise that I am always watching for my returning birds, and am particularly proud that my rampant underbrush has been home annually to a brown thrasher for some time now. It's no longer a source of conflict with the meticulous gardener next door, since she's converted to birdwatching, herself.

The distress we would feel if we never saw our cardinals, mourning doves, robins, cedar waxwings, Carolina wrens - none of us want to experience that, ever.

Many of the birds that migrate to Britain and Europe from Africa every spring, from the willow warbler to the cuckoo, are undergoing alarming declines, new research shows.

The falls in numbers are so sharp and widespread that ornithologists are waking up to a major new environmental problem – the possibility that the whole system of bird migration between Africa and Europe is running into trouble.
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The study, compiled by the RSPB research biologist Steven Ewing and likely to be published later this year, goes on to show that this pattern is not confined to Britain. It is being repeated across Europe as a whole, from Spain to Finland, with 27 out of 37 European-African migratory species for which there is reliable long-term population data – 72 per cent of the total – undergoing declines.

Our lives are not just poorer for the loss of beautiful creatures, and of other inhabitants of this earth. The fact that we depend on so many life forms for sustaining life, not just to eat, makes that loss hazardous to our health, as well.

We've objected, and sometimes combated, the abuse of our world in many ways, but until recently, we've been fighting against indifference, even an abusive mind-set. As the losses we've been subjected to are growing every day more a concern to rational people, the actual danger is becoming more clear. Global warming is showing its ugly face, and now starvation has become an acknowledged, discernible, result.

Concern for our environment isn't a luxury that elitists get emotional over at the expense of the economically deprived. Hunting Bambi isn't the problem. Our environment can't be damaged without hurting ourselves.

Earth Day dawns tomorrow full of the potential to work with or against the forces of nature. Our lives depend on our choices.

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These conservatives in training sure got the message right. If you truly dislike your fellow man and consider basic decency more politically correct dogma, you will want to play this game with the Young Conservatives of Texas.

If race-baiting makes you vomit, you may want to consider another diversion.

The Texas Tech community reacted to a student organization after it organized and conducted a game called "Catch the Illegal Immigrant" March 31, which involved a controversial T-shirt with words "Illegal Immigrant" written on the front and the words "Catch Me If You Can" bannered across the back.
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The game consisted of a handful of students, all Caucasian, who wore the T-shirts as they went to classes on campus, he said. If another student encountered one of the students donning the shirt, he or she could bring the "illegal immigrant" back to the Young Conservatives of Texas table outside of the Student Union Building, where he or she would be awarded a prize.

While the event occurred on Cesar Chavez Day, a day intended to celebrate the Mexican-American political activist and leader, Cullin said its organizers did not intentionally schedule it on that day. It was a coincidence.

There's a way to make your parents proud, if you happen to be descended from the kind of family that uses racial insults to amuse themselves, while they cheat the illeguls that do the gardening with less than minimum wage.

I am waiting for a world where nastiness to fellow beings earns sneers, not prizes. Maybe one of the prizes could be "Letter From The Birmingham Jail"? We can hope.