Listening to canaries

Urban areas need more preserves like Brooks-Hummel

“A staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.”

— John W. Fitzpatrick and Peter Marra, American ornithologists, in the New York Times on the vanishing of one-third of the wild birds in the U.S. and Canada since the 1970s

For almost a century coal miners enjoyed the company of highly sensitive little birds, caged and taken with them into the dark depths. “The canary in the mine” became a phrase denoting a warning of danger because the bird’s role was to drop over dead if odorless carbon monoxide or other dangerous gas was present. Miners understood the bird’s health was an indicator of risk to their own health.

In 1962, Rachel Carson challenged the biocide industry (pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, etc.) with her book, “Silent Spring,” warning of the silence the world would experience as poisons decimated bird populations. She managed to change some minds in the poison business, but some 1 billion pounds of biocides are still used each year. She understood ecosystem connections.

We apparently still do not understand the connection between bird and human health to environmental health. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates that since 1970 the overall North American bird population has decreased by almost 3 billion birds. That’s billion with a “b.” Causes range from cat kills to window strikes to pesticides to invasive species to plastic pollution to habitat loss, etc. We can do something about almost all these.

Wildlife habitat needs, just like ours, are food, water, safety and shelter, but we humans tend to destroy theirs when we get ours. Across Northwest Arkansas, for example, great swaths of forest acreage are being bulldozed into burn piles and the resulting barren landscapes are being covered over with roads and structures. Worshipping at the altar of “infill” would not be such a devastating practice if developments were built with the original land features and under the existing mature tree canopies. Land wiped clear for building sites also is wiped clear of wildlife habitat and connection corridors.

Fortunately a few pockets of habitat here and there in towns have been preserved for creatures other than us. I was recently reminded of one very special place in Fayetteville that, although only 14 acres, has attracted at least 61 identified bird species to its relatively undisturbed surroundings. There are probably many more species utilizing the area, but not enough observers recording year-round data. The Cornell Lab’s eBird website has included this preserved place on its site.

Also check out their Merlin Bird ID app.

The Brooks-Hummel Nature Reserve, which was once a farm but is now mostly wooded with a few meadow patches, is nestled between the east and west hill ridges north of privately owned Lake Lucille. The First United Presbyterian Church sits atop the east ridge and allows parking in the northwest corner of their lot for hikers only — no bikes — to access the natural area.

Sublett Creek runs the length of this property, adding riparian features and wildlife to the mix. The slopes of Mount Sequoyah drain into this creek, a small part of the larger watershed of the Illinois River, an important water source for our region. Trees filtering the water off those slopes include native red, black, white and post oaks, sycamores, hickories (including shag barks), walnuts, hackberries, redbuds, cherries and others. Deer, fox, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, turtles, snakes, frogs and multiple other animal and plant communities make up this ecosystem.

Through the efforts of local citizens in the Fayetteville Natural Heritage Association, the property was purchased by the city in 2007. Then FNHA raised almost $180,000 to purchase a conservation easement from the city to ensure the nature reserve “will remain forever predominately in its present condition as a nature park preserving the natural habitat as much as possible.”

Care for this place, and all such fragmented parcels of land available to wildlife, needs to include removing invasive plants like bush honeysuckle and repairing degraded land. Wildlife preserves are the homes of creatures other than humans, and we need to respect their spaces and needs, including safety and quietness. Otherwise, humans also become an invasive species.

There are still natural areas left in our rapidly populating region, but they become fewer by the day. As we squeeze closer and closer together, we squeeze out that quality of life for humans and wildlife that is the reason we chose to be here in the first place. We need to listen to the “canaries in the mine.” The homeless birds and critters are trying to tell us there is danger in our actions.