Books: Save songbirds, stop cycle of silence

The silent spring predicted by Rachel Carson in her 1962 bestseller could be closer than we imagined. The lethal cocktail of pesticides, climate change and deforestation has halved the songbird population during the past four decades. Each spring marks even more of a decline.

Bridget Stutchbury, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, says that without songbirds, our forests face more insect infestations and our trees, flowers and gardens lose a crucial link in their reproductive cycle.

To back up her position, Stutchbury tracked the migratory patterns of birds on their 6,000-mile journey from the tropics to North America. Her findings were alarming. As she puts it, the metaphor of the canary in a coalmine has never been more apt. Songbird depopulation signals an ecosystem breakdown stemming directly from human intervention. This is, she says, not just a North American crisis, it is truly global.

There are several threats to songbirds in addition to pesticides, she points out. Tropical forests are being cleared at the highest rate in the history of mankind, and if forest loss continues at its present rate, within a few human generations more than 25 percent of the world’s birds will be lost — forever.

Stutchbury predicts that we have already lost half of the songbirds that filled the skies a mere 40 years ago, and adds that an additional 12 percent face extinction in the near future.

This is an excellent work by a distinguished scientist. The author is convinced that many of the threats must be addressed through both local and international policy initiatives. Individual citizens can also do their part to protect and maintain the songbird population. By working together, Stutchbury hopes this alarming trend can be reversed.