Kirtland Warbler, photo source on the web

This week is dedicated to some of the birds I recently photographed and stories and questions they brought to mind.

We will start with a report I heard on the radio yesterday, a re-broadcast of an old NPR radiolab piece about a threatened species, the Kirtland warbler. The basics of the story as I remember them are as follows.

Happy little warbler in Michigan disappears. Wildlife services try to figure out why and pinpoint the nasty cow bird, a non-native species. Cowbirds, like cuckoos,  surreptitiously place their ow egg in the warblers’ nest, throwing one of the old eggs out to make space. When chick hatches, it grows at 4 times the speed than the warbler hatchlings, and so commands more room, throwing another chick out and gets all the food, since the parents feed the noisiest one first.

(These photos from the internet.)

A killing of cowbird commences to save the warblers. Traps are set, birds are killed by hand. 12ooo dead cowbirds later, the warbler population seems not to improve. So they figure that it was really also the absence of young trees, because wildfires have not been allowed to happen to protect humans. Wildlife services decide to try controlled burns. With few resources, few firefighters etc, burn gets out of control and ravages 20.000 acres in a blink, killing in its way a young wildlife technician who was eager to save the birds.

The question that many ask is: is saving a species worth a human life? After all there are some 50 species of warblers alive and well? Is putting so many resources into species protection, killing so many other birds worth the warbler continuity? If you decide to forgo saving one species, what about the next and the next and the next?

In some important way, the premise is wrong. The young man was killed due to circumstances in the process of protection, not because of the protection. The species is disappearing because of land use issues, interrupting the natural cycle of things.

Framing issues as human interest stories were emotions are roused when you hear the sad family, are dangerous in times where the Endanger Species Act is under assault by a reckless administration. ( Knew I would get there somehow….)

Photographs of warblers in the Columbia Gorge last week.)

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91723-weighing-good-intentions/