Category: Environmental_Science

Comment and discussions on areas associated with environmental science.

8 BILLION !! What are YOU doing?

By the time we reach the next quarter century World Population will reach 8 BILLION people.

This is a troubling number as each one of us will need food and shelter and health care and should have the opportunity to lead a productive and happy life.

But will we all have that opportunity?

It’s up to YOU!

What are you doing to prepare the world for 8 BILLION? What are you doing to help each man, woman, and child to be fed and sheltered and cared for? What are you doing to help each individual have a life in which they have the opportunity to help their community and to feel the joy of knowing they are contributing to the benefit of others.

During the Renaissance, during the Age of Discovery, during the Reformation, when the French Revolution was taking place, there were less than 1 Billion people on Earth.

But with the industrial revolution and the concurrent increases in the knowledge of science and healthy living conditions more people were being born – and living to be older than in the generations before them. 200 years ago the world population was only 1 Billion. The world passed the 2 Billion mark only about 100 years ago. But by the turn of the century in the year 2000 we nearly TRIPLED that number and we soon passed the 6 Billion mark. Population growth has slowed. But we are still increasing, and by the year 2025 we will reach a world population of 8 BILLION people! And the population will continue to grow from there. Projections of population growth are that by mid-century, in the year 2050, world population will increase by another Billion and we will surpass 9 Billion people on our world.

The increase from 1 Billion to 2 Billion, a doubling, took 100 years. To get from 2 Billion to 9 Billion, more than four times the number, will take less than 200 years. The projections for population increase over the 25 years between 2025 and 2050 are that we will add more than 1 Billion people by mid-century. The 1 Billion increase that took over 100 years to achieve after 1800 will take less than 25 years.

Ask the internet. Ask your neighbors. Ask people where you work. Ask your Government. Ask your church. What can we do – what can I do – so we will be ready?

This is a question for all of us – for you and for me. How am I preparing to help the world at 8 BILLION? And then 9 Billion!

Each of us should rejoice in the Earth. Each of us should go out and experience the world, nature, wild life, birds, crawling things, all of it, including our fellow human-beings.

When we stand in a park or in the woods or next to a flowing stream or pause beside a field of wheat or a bed of sun flowers, we should marvel at it and we should also ask ourselves, “What can I do to preserve and prepare the Earth for all my new neighbors?”

And then act!

 

The picture of the child is based on a photograph at wallpaperbetter.com.

Quail and Sparrow

I submitted my siting to the online bird database. The first thing they told me – and I expected them to tell me this – was that I likely did not see what I told them I saw.  But that’s ok, the data managers’ responsibility is to ensure the data submitted makes sense.

What I had seen was a black bellied whistling duck (BBWD). But I knew the bird was way out of its normal neighborhood. The BBWD is a bird of Florida and southeast Texas and up the Mississippi River as far as Tennessee. The map of its range can be seen on the black bellied whistling duck page of the terrific, on-line Cornell guide to birds. But it is not seen in a creek in the hills of Virginia. But that’s where I saw him, or rather them. Three BBWD standing in a creek on those long, very unduck-like legs with their long necks held high.

They looked quite at home in this lowland stream. And I was very much at home in the outdoors walking these woodland paths. I had not seen one of these long-legged ducks before, but I knew them from pictures. I was certain they were not geese. But I was surprised to see them there minding their business while I minded mine. As I watched them they flew off to some other more private stream. I imagine that they were heading back to a location that they are more use to. I watched them until they disappeared through the trees. I stood and continued to watch and listen in case they circled back. They did not.

What is it about birds that has the capability to enrapture us?

I think it’s because they make themselves available to us. They fly overhead. They will sit in a bush – perhaps hidden – and sing to us and to all of creation. They have the capability to remind us of the life and the beauty that is abundant in this world. And knowing this, they also remind us of our responsibility to enjoy and protect them, and to protect areas in which they can live so that they come back year in and year out to nest and sing and give new life and joy. The appearance of a certain bird may be a harbinger of spring. Or it may be an indication of a change in the weather, as gulls flocking inland may be warning of a storm. Their morning songs bring up the sun. And their last flights of evening bring the return to the nest and the calm of the night.

There are two birds in which I am currently interested as a volunteer citizen-scientist for a national park. I help with the park’s bird observation and management programs. It’s great. I have a reason to be out in the woods and the open fields. And it takes me out for the sunrise and into the new day that follows. I often hike to my listening stations in the pre-dawn darkness. It takes me out in the Spring and in the Fall and my task is – to listen to the birds sing.

I listen for the gentle call of the Northern Bobwhite Quail and the often hidden and reclusive Henslow’s Sparrow, a little bird of the open fields. The surveys each bird are repeated in selected areas along specific transects with established stations. It requires standing still and listening; it requires patience. Often I do not hear the quail whether it be the well-know “bob-white” call or the more muted nesting calls that might be heard. Nor do I often hear the Henslow’s Sparrow the thin, reedy notes that might rise and fall in the tall grass. But that’s all part of being outside. The birds are allowing me to share their home. I come with respect and quietness.  And I am rewarded, if not by the song of my subject bird, by the call of all their feathered partners of the woods and fields.

Listening and surveying for these birds is part of an overall program to determine the health of the local environment and its ability to support these birds and birds similar to them. If the birds are present it means that they have an adequate food supply and have a place to perch, or hide, or loaf. I love that term and often picture the quail loafing around their nesting area. However, absence of these birds indicates that they and other birds may not find the food or cover or level of calmness that they like in order to take up and maintain residence in the area. As noted above we have a responsibility to ensure that we maintain and conserve areas where wildlife may thrive and we can go and loaf ourselves.

And the Whistling Ducks, they are welcome to come back anytime, but I agree with the purveyors of protocol on the bird site. This is not a normal occurrence, but it is the normal and the not-normal that continue to draw me outside to enjoy the birds, and the woods, streams and open fields.

Halcyon!

Picture is taken from Jules Breton’s painting “The Song of the Lark” from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.