For All of You Budding Ornithologists

For All of You Budding Ornithologists

One of today’s editorials in The New York Times makes an urgent plea to citizens of the world following the Audubon Society’s report last week that the average decline of 20 selected bird species is 68 percent. Here’s a good part:

In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth…The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself. We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.

Hmm.. I’m tempted to care, but, on the other hand, birds are not mentioned in the Constitution and protecting them just leads down the slippery slope of socialism!