Discuss: Disappearing Animal Migrations

At the start of the 21st century, the discribution of earth’s life-forms continues to evolve. Humans are more “in control,” because the birth-rates of humans exceeds what is needed for replacement, and this means other forms reduce. The needs of lumber, food, petroleum, and other human industries force animals, birds and sea-life to take a smaller fraction of earth, which means they become fewer as humans become greater in number.

Negative Population Growth is a group that strives to bring the birth-rate of humans down to the replacement level. Is there any other such organization? Obviously no government entity has this as its interest. But as farm-land vanishes, it must eventually occur.

An article in the same Orion issue declares that “hope is radical”.
We can be “radical” about saving migrations while they are still in great numbers, or about global warming or any number of things.  To mention ‘government’ action in the same article however, arouses the cynic in me, while wanting desperately to remain a radical.
Still world population grows, even in China despite the one child laws.  It grows in the east because the only safety net for old age is sons. In the west it is encouraged by handed down beliefs. So change depends on establishing those safety nets and on a sea change of beliefs. In face of this it is hard to remain radical.

Our collective memory is so short, it scares me. I once heard that man was the only animal to stumble twice on the same rock. We keep repeating the same errors over and over out of neglect without looking at all the factors influencing changes.Meanwhile nature is so resilient, it reinvents itself with all the blows. The make up of the North American vegetation map has already changed so much that few people from the last two hundred years or so would recognize it.
Let us be vigilant, and listen carefully to the silences in our forests.

Our current environmental administrators seem more concerned with profit than protection.  Case in point, the delay in ruling to place the polar bear on the endangered species list—- until oil leases can be sold—- giving away prime polar bear habitat. Delisting a species from the Endangered Species Act (the Bald Eagle, for example) does nothing but put this creature’s habitat at risk.  Now the trees where eagles nest can be cut down..  Refusing to act to save a species—- when all scientific evidence point to its demise -and choosing to develop an endangered creature’s habitat for oil drilling and resource development—should be considered a criminal offense !