From Wildlife Conservation Society:
“A long-term study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the BioDiversity Research Institute, and other organizations has found and confirmed that environmental mercury–much of which comes from human-generated emissions–is impacting both the health and reproductive success of common loons in the Northeast.”

Pretty much…everything I posted today could have been under the heading of “Species Collapse,” but then you might have come upon our homepage and thought there was a bug (or endangered bug) in the system because of the repetition of the species collapse symbol.

So I mixed it up, because I’ve learned over the months of doing this site that if I don’t, I’ll get overwhelmed.

Let’s take today’s findings one story at a time.

1) Polar bears’ status as threatened is being delayed by the Interior.

2) Eels are declining

3) Next, I found this loon story and decided I had to search for good news just to keep my spirits up. So I found the good news that a giant wind farm is being constructed in Southern California.

Of course, I forgot for that moment that the one real problem with wind energy is that birds are kind of brainless and fly into them and sliced and diced or simply bludgeoned to death.

4) so then I found the giant oyster story– a natural for our Biome Breach scenario — and sure enough it was a classic tale of a human intervention creating an invasive species situation.

5) having interpolated a couple of non-species collapse stories, I returned to my loon story.

Late in that story, I find this quote: “This study demonstrates how top predators such as common loons can be used as the proverbial ‘canaries-in-the-coalmine’ for pollutants that concern humans as well,” said David C. Evers of the BioDiversity Research Institute and lead author of the study. “Our findings can be used to facilitate national and global decisions for regulating mercury emissions from coal-burning plants and other sources.”

There’s that metaphor again: canary in the coalmine, one we’ve been using for bats in the northeast and pteropods in the Atlantic and…

It seems chillingly true that the planet is being divided into the haves and the have nots. On one end, the endangered species: the polar bears, the eels, the loons, the bats, the pteropods, the eastern hemlock, the honey bees and … on the other end, the oysters and rats and jellyfish and cane toads and even the Asian harlequin ladybird….

Biomes are breached, species collapse, climate is changed, metaphors proliferate like … well, like oysters and rats and rabbits and cane toads.

Let’s just declare the human species as threatened or endangered. That may be the wake up call we need.

Jim

Tags: canaries-in-the-coalmines, eels, giant oysters, loons, polar bears, threatened species

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Originally posted on Saturday, March 8th, 2008 at 4:10 pm. Filed under Biome Breach, Recovery, Species Collapse. Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 RSS feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.