Matters of Scale: The Birds.

MATTERS OF SCALE

The Birds

Number of species of Hawaiian birds
called honeycreepers that have
gone extinct                                  28

Number of species of honeycreepers
not yet known to be threatened
with extinction                                3

Number of communications towers in
Kansas with which bird collisions
on a single cloudy night in 1998
resulted in the death of 5,000 to
10,000 lapland longspurs                       1

Number of towers more than twice
the height of the Kansas tower
(which was 420 feet high) expected
to be erected in the United States
by TV stations converting to the
digital format                             1,000

Population of white-backed vultures
in Keoladeo Ghana National Park in
India, in 1988                               816

Population of white-backed vultures
in the same park in 2000                       1

Estimated number of birds exposed
to agricultural pesticides in the
United States each year              672 MILLION

Estimated number of those birds
that die each year                    67 MILLION

Number of bird species that have
gone extinct worldwide over the
past two centuries                           103

Number of bird species threatened
with extinction in the next
century                                    1,186

SOURCES: Howard Youth, "The Plight of Birds," World Watch, May/June
2002; D. Pimental et al., "Environmental and Economic Costs of Pesticide
Use," BioScience, 1992, vol. 42, pp. 750-60.