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BIRDING

Grassland – the hardest hit habitat
CHAOS IN THE

BIRD WORLD

BY JAMES CLARKE, PICTURES BY MARY BROADLEY
Agriculture and urbanization are destroying habitats.

ccording to the journal, In Canada and the US, grassland birds take up a lot of what is left. In the 1980s I
Science, North America has were hit especially hard, with a 53% was involved in surveying the coal mining
lost three billion birds since reduction in population. Shorebirds were damage and learned the land can never
1970. Grassland birds are already at low numbers in the 70s and be rehabilitated for agriculture.
Athe hardest hit. have now lost more than one-third of their
population. The widespread use of pesticides is also
South Africa has a similar problem. contributing to declining bird numbers.
That we have a similar trend in South And climate change? That, too, must be
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Africa is hardly surprising given the affecting habitats here and across the
American Bird Conservancy noted a 29% massive destruction of our grassland. Just world.
decline in bird populations across diverse note the horrific destruction of grassland
groups and habitats – from songbirds along the N4 to Kruger Park for open Michael Parr, president of the American
to long-distance migratory birds such cast coal mining to feed Eskom’s power Bird Conservancy, suggests that
as swallows and backyard birds like stations. Mealies and sunflower production apart from needed policy changes,
sparrows. It amounts to a loss of one in
four birds in the last 50 years.

Emily Holden in The Guardian reported
that scientists are calling it ‘a widespread
ecological crisis’. She reports that the
population losses are consistent with what
scientists have noted among insects and
amphibians.

Insects? I noticed the first butterflies
in my garden only in mid-January.
Then came the blizzard of small white
butterflies (Belenois aurota) on their
annual, lemming-like migration from their
breeding grounds in the dry west to fly
ever eastwards, most of them to die over
the Indian Ocean.

Over the last 10 years, says Holden, data
collected from weather radar stations that
scan the night skies, and from professional
institutions across the world, indicate a
14 percent drop in migrating volumes of
swallows and other migrants.
Red-headed finches
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