Last week I spent an evening in a charming little wine bar fronting on a major thoroughfare in Houston. Anyone who has visited Houston can testify as to the intensity of the traffic. As the din began to make speaking difficult at our table, I began to think about the impacts such masking noise must have on breeding birds. How can a Henslow’s Sparrow or Black-and-white Warbler be heard above such a cacophony?
Therefore I decided to see what existed in the literature about the impacts of roads and traffic on wildlife. Interestingly, I found quite a corpus of work that has been completed on this issue. Therefore I have posted links to a few of the many, many articles and papers that I found with a simple web search.
The results seem to be consistent. Yes, the noise from traffic does impact many species of breeding birds, even more significantly than do visual impacts. Therefore when we consider the impacts of roads on birds, we need to look well beyond the direct loss of habitat attributed to road building and the subsequent development that roads provoke. For some species and populations, new road construction may well become roads to nowhere.
Ted Eubanks
10 June 2009
http://birdpark.webs.com/
hi all..
Gosh, we're up against the wall..Please help, even if you don't
comment..although words do help.
We're trying to save a bird habitat, sanctuary,and tourist attraction..Big
business always finds ways when its suits some fatcat ..Time is short..but
we try! Nature and natural resources are an international thing..These birds
that nest in the quarry, fly across the oceans, to lands far away..It may
seem insignificant, but when a habitat dies, its never the same..Someone
somewhere may not see the same birds again…it could even be you, wondering
why some birds don't come around anymore..they could be ours!
Dear Sir, I believe we live in a society that does not value our birds or our right to enjoy those birds in peace. I wonder what boom boxes do to our birds? I planted bamboo around my yard to block noise, provide habitat for fledglings, and block entry to cats. Cats still come into our yard & killed 8 or 10 fledglings and nestlings this year. They often face a furious Airedale! Our city does not take free roaming cats serious and as far as I can tell neither does any city in Texas. Lake Jackson, home to the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory(members of ABC's Cat Indoors! policy board)and numerous refuges and sanctuaries has an exemption they refuse to change allowing cats to roam free legally. Only when a "cat becomes a nuisance" can you file. Then they refuse to do anything but bring a trap most cats will not enter. If Lake Jackson changes the law it will not fix the problem. Many cities who have strict leash laws do not enforce laws against cat owners. However, it will send a message to citizens they are breaking the law. It will also send a message to birders. Although some members of the Brazosport Birders lobbyed the city to change the law,the group as a whole voted to ignore the city policy allowing cats to roam free in Lake Jackson since many of them are cat owners who allow their cats to roam free. Curiously, the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory remained silent despite the fact they are on Cat indoors! policy board. So with situational ethics in play all over Texas, we remain stuck in a position of cats trespassing and killing at will with govt sanctions of two years in jail if you kill one. A Galveston birder many of us like and admire would now face two years in jail for his remedy. Someone should sue the city of Galveston for allowing city workers to feed ferals so near an obvious habitat for endangered species. The city did not see it that way. As far as I know the city still allow those cats to be fed. After 10 years of working this issue I am ready to start an effort to change the laws and the habits of Texans where cats are concerned. I hope to have your support when it comes time to face Alley Cat Allies who bragged in their newsletter this year of protecting feral cats in Texas by forcing Senators to adopt a letter of intention stating feral cats would not be put on the invasive species list where they belong. Thanks for your tireless work to protect our environment.