No Escape for Migrating Birds

Birds face threats everywhere they go, and northern countries are responsible for a lot of the dangers. Looking out for them in their breeding range is not enough.

In a recent article in the New York Times, (Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird? Opinion, Mar 30, 2008) Bridget Stutchbury discusses the impact of extensive pesticide use in Central and South America on migratory birds. It seems that birds returning to the south for the winter are dying in vast numbers from pesticide poisoning. Many of the pesticides that are being used in large quantities in the south have been banned or restricted in the north due to their toxicity.

People in North America and Europe are increasingly aware of threats to bird species, whether it be chemicals, destruction of wetlands or other habitat, wind farm development, fishing practices, even feral cats. Concern and conservation have become more intense since National Audubon revealed that many common North American birds are in precipitous decline.

It’s ironic, then, that even as we become more aware at home, we fuel the decline of birds in the south with our hunger for imported produce. Those pesticides we’re not using are being used to produce our food anyway—they’re just being used somewhere else. To help the birds and our own health, Stutchbury suggests that we should avoid buying the following produce from Central and South America if it has not been organically grown: coffee, bananas, melons, strawberries, green beans, bell peppers, and tomatoes.

Bridget Stutchbury is the author of Silence of the Songbirds (Harper Collins, 2007).