Swifts Matter
"The living world is disappearing before our eyes"
Peter Crane, Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Are we destroying the Earth and all life on it? Then how can our children and their
children live? The Earth can live without us, but we cannot live without the Earth. Going
to Mars is all very well, but Elton John got it right. It's no place to raise your kids.
Does it matter if a species is wiped out? Yes - every species except for us Humans
is interlinked with every other in a balanced environment that maintains the
wherewithal to live; our supplies of oxygen, water and food depend on all these life
forms thriving. When Humans intervene the results are unfortunate, sometimes
catastrophic. The obvious example is the Brazilian rainforest, a rich and vast
resource burned away to provide poor farmland that is useless after only a few years.
Less trees and plants = less oxygen for us to breath, and no way of absorbing the
excess CO2 we create with our industry. The result is climate change that will
challenge our civilization, and a loss of soil fertility that may see entire populations starve.
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Auks drowned in a
salmon net. Shallow set nets account for vast numbers
of these birds. Setting the nets a few feet lower would
solve the problem, but if as here it isn't done, the
birds are trapped and die. |
A Gannet killed by
discarded fishing line. The dumping of nets and line
causes massive damage to wildlife. Every sea creature
from birds to fishes, sharks, whales, turtles and seals
is threatened by this. |
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Have we the right to eliminate other life forms? We think the untimely death of a human unacceptable, yet we use up animal life with hardly a care. To give just
one example, Albatrosses and other big
seabirds often feed by scavenging for food behind fishing vessels,
knowing they are a good source of scraps when they gut the catch.
But when "long-lining", these fishing boats cast out miles
of lines with
thousands of baited hooks on them. Seabirds try to eat the baits as they are cast behind the boat. They swallow the hooks and are dragged
underwater to drown. It is thought that millions of seabirds are killed every
year by fishing activities, either caught on hooks, trapped in
nets set too close to the surface, or entangled in discarded fishing
tackle. Because of this, 26 species of
seabird, including 17 species of Albatross, are facing extinction.
It's no better on
land. In the UK, within just the past thirty years or so, the number of wild birds has halved. The 50 million or so Northern European migrating
birds, Swifts included, slaughtered illegally every year by hunters around the Mediterranean are visible victims; habitat destruction, massive use of insecticides,
insensitive planning, pollution and hostile agricultural techniques probably wipe out as many more each year within Europe alone. How long can we go on like this
and still have birds in our world?
A life without the wild world? Is that our future? It is looking ever more likely, so
how do we fancy our children never knowing the real wild world out there, and all
that's in it? Sitting at their computers, they can be as isolated as a prisoner
in a dungeon. How will they discover and appreciate reality? And how will we ensure
there is a real wild world left for them to live in?
Swifts are fun! Swifts enhance our lives with their dramatic flight and exciting calls! Please help Swifts. They've proven they can live with us if we let them. We
should welcome and cherish them, and rejoice in the Earth and its living creatures.
Next - How you
can help Swifts 
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