Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.
Interpretation
Birds serve as a warning sign for the health of our environment and, by extension, our own well-being.
This quote highlights the role of birds as environmental indicators. It suggests that the health and behavior of bird populations reflect the state of ecosystems. When birds face challenges, it signals that the environment is suffering, and this can soon impact human life as well. Essentially, it serves as a reminder of our interconnectedness within the natural world.
In practice
In a speech about climate change, one might say, 'As Roger Tory Peterson wisely noted, birds are indicators of the environment.'
Birds ... are sensitive indicators of the environment, a sort of "ecological litmus paper," ... The observation and recording of bird populations over time lead inevitably to environmental awareness and can signal impending changes.
The truth of the matter is, the birds could very well live without us, but many -- perhaps all -- of us would find life incomplete, indeed almost intolerable without the birds.
The philosophy that I have worked under most of my life is that the serious study of natural history is an activity which has far-reaching effects in every aspect of a person's life. It ultimately makes people protective of the environment in a very committed way. It is my opinion that the study of natural history should be the primary avenue for creating environmentalists.
Birding, after all, is just a game. Going beyond that is what is important.
Spring drew on... and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.
Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?
Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.
...for most people in the [Jewish] Ghetto [of Warsaw] nature lived only in memory -- no parks, birds, or greenery existed in the Ghetto -- and they suffered the loss of nature like a phantom-limb pain, an amputation that scrambled the body's rhythms, starved the senses, and made basic ideas about the world impossible for children to fathom.
You would have thought that our first priority would be to ask what the ecologists are finding out, because we have to live within the conditions and principles they define. Instead, we've elevated the economy above ecology.
Celebrate Earth Day every day.
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