Soybean production in the Amazon destroys habitat for migrating birds

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Songbirds, Migration and Soy: What’s the Connection?

0 4/27/2015 // By Gabrielle Swaby

Spring season is now in full swing, with bluebells blooming and daffodils dancing. And, even sweeter, there is the sound of songbirds singing.

Now is peak migration time for many of these songbirds and they and other neotropical migrantsare finally returning north to their breeding grounds – your backyards and gardens included!  Bird lovers and wildlife gardeners can plant native trees, shrubs and wildflowers to feed and provide nesting spots for birds close to home, but what about the state of the habitat these same birds need when they fly south? Many of these birds overwinter in the Amazon.

Red-eyed vireo by Kelly Colgan Azar via Flickr Creative Commons.

There are 28 migratory bird species (20 land birds and 8 water birds) that regularly call the Amazon home during the winter. This group includes songbirds such as the eastern wood pewee, chimney swift, gray-cheeked thrush, eastern kingbird, veery, black-whiskered vireo, red-eyed vireo, blackpoll warbler, and Connecticut warbler, as well as raptors such as the broad-winged hawk, peregrine falcon and osprey.

These species depend on forested habitats for food and shelter, but forests across the globe are disappearing at an alarming rate. About 30-37 million acres of forest are lost each year, the equivalent of 36 football fields per minute!

Connecticut Warbler by Melanie Underwood via Flickr Creative Commons.

In the Amazon, large scale agriculture is one of the main driving forces of deforestation. These agricultural goods are used to produce much of our food, clothing, and personal care products – from leather handbags and shoes to beef jerky and lip balm. This also includes soy used in animal feed in Europe and Asia, which ends up as nuggets and sausages in grocery stores and restaurants around the world.

However, there is some good news for our migratory friends and for their forested homes down south.

Eastern kingbird by Kelly Colgan Azar via Flickr Creative Commons.

NWF is leading the charge to help promote forest-friendly production for the key agricultural goods that are produced in the Brazilian Amazon. Just recently, NWF experts co-authored a new study that highlighted the effectiveness of a forest-friendly initiative focused on soy, known as the Soy Moratorium. The Moratorium was the first voluntary zero-deforestation agreement in the tropics, and it prevents major traders from selling soy that is linked to deforestation in the Amazon.

This agreement has been incredibly effective at safeguarding critical wildlife habitat against deforestation for soy in the Brazilian Amazon, thus helping to ensure that our migratory friends have a place to call home during the cold winter months in the United States.

According to the study, without the Soy Moratorium, almost 5 million acres of Amazon forest could be legally cleared for soy. In other words, 5 million acres of habitat for migratory birds could be lost. So, this is a big victory for our wildlife. Additionally, this new study helps reinforce the position that NWF has supported for years: maintaining and strengthening the Soy Moratorium (and other forest-friendly initiatives) is the best strategy to reduce agriculture-related deforestation and protect our wildlife.

Gray-cheeked thrush by John Benson via Flickr Creative Commons.

While you work to improve wildlife habitat at home through our Garden for Wildlife program, we are also working to protect wildlife habitats around the world. You can join us in this effort by reaching out to the retailers and manufacturers of your favorite products to ask questions like: “Does your company have a policy on zero-deforestation?” and “From where do you source your raw ingredients?” Help start the conversation at the local level. Every little bit counts and, when the homes of our migratory friends are at stake, we need to do all we can to help save their habitats.

Learn more about the Soy Moratorium and other ways the NWF International Team is working to protect forests in the tropics.

from Wildlife Promise

Tags: agriculture, Amazon, Birds, Brazil, deforestation, Garden for Wildlife, migration, soybeans,spring migration, tropical forests

By: Gabrielle Swaby

Gabrielle Swaby’s Bio // Archive of Posts
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Legislator wants to outlaw tree-protection ordinances

Stricken language would be deleted from and underlined language would be added to present law.

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT CITIES AND COUNTIES FROM DENYING PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNERS THE RIGHT TO CUT DOWN OR TRIM TREES, BUSHES, OR SHRUBS; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.
Subtitle
TO PROHIBIT CITIES AND COUNTIES FROM DENYING PRIVATE PROPERTY OWNERS THE RIGHT TO CUT DOWN OR TRIM TREES, BUSHES, OR SHRUBS.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS:
SECTION 1. Arkansas Code Title 14, Chapter 1, is amended to add an additional subchapter to read as follows:
Subchapter 4 - Landowner Tree Maintenance Protection Act

      14-1-401.  Title.

This subchapter shall be known and may be cited as the "Landowner Tree Maintenance Protection Act".

      14-1-402.  Findings and legislative intent.

(a) The General Assembly finds that the right to own, use, and enjoy private property:

            (1)  Is protected by the Arkansas Constitution and the United
States Constitution;

(2) Is a hallmark of Arkansas and American society, deeply

*DLP112* 02-26-2015 12:52:16 DLP112

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embedded in the fabric of both urban and rural societies; and
(3) Should be protected from undue interference by state and
local government.
(b) It is the intent of the General Assembly by this act to preserve
and protect the property rights of citizens by ensuring that state, county, and local government does not prohibit a landowner from cutting down, trimming, or removing the landowner's trees, bushes, or shrubs.

      14-1-403.  Definitions.
      As used in this subchapter:

            (1)  "Landowner" means:
                  (A)  An individual who owns real property; and
                  (B)  The authorized agents of an individual who owns real

property; and
(2) "Tree Maintenance" means cutting down, trimming, or removing

a tree, bush, or shrub.

14-1-404. County and municipal ordinances restricting tree maintenance prohibited — Exceptions.
(a) A county, city, or town shall not restrict by ordinance or otherwise the right of a landowner to perform tree maintenance on the landowner's property.
(b) Subsection (a) of this section does not permit a landowner to perform tree maintenance on the landowner's property if the tree maintenance on the landowner's property would violate:
(1) A real property covenant or deed restriction;
(2) A bill of assurance; or
(3) A requirement or restriction imposed by a homeowner's
association, a property owner's association, or a similar organization whether imposed by a duly recorded master deed and bylaws or otherwise.

      14-1-405.  Conflicting ordinances repealed.

      An ordinance of a county, city, or town that conflicts with this
subchapter is repealed to the extent of the conflict.

SB637

2 02-26-2015 12:52:16 DLP112 

Joe Neal essay: Eighth wonder of the World

The 8th Wonder of the World‏

The 8th Wonder of the World

joe neal

6:39 AM

To: ARBIRD-L@LISTSERV.uark.edu

FOR MANY YEARS, ONE OF MY REGULAR STOPS ON FAYETTEVILLE CBC has been at Eleanor Johnson’s, including the feeder, bushes in her backyard, and adjoining wooded lot with gnarled post oaks. We always knock on El’s door, where she has cookies, offers a welcome pit stop. Her place is just west of the University, a block or two from Razorback Stadium. They built their home in the 1950s, the first in what was one of Fayetteville’s earliest subdivisions. El traded being a vagabond artist for settled life with The Professor, traveling around collecting lichens on vacations, nurturing graduate students, raising a daughter and son. Dr Johnson – “The Professor” she called him – walked every day the few blocks to his classroom and lab.
When I met her in the late 1960s, I was a former firm-believing Southern Baptist badly disillusioned by the napalming of Vietnamese villages and the murder of Martin Luther King. She hired me to weed flowerbeds and provided a simple lunch and civil conversation. It was the 8^th Wonder of the World that obvious sanity survived midst B-52s over jungles. It took me a while to re-believe. 
Enclosed by native sandstones, her flowerbeds were magnets for interesting bugs watched by robins, midst almighty Ozark weeds. Years before, she’d found arrowhead-like stone tools while planting tulip bulbs. We had plenty of time to become acquainted. She remembered when Dr William Berg, noted entomologist and Arkansas bird man in the era before Doug James, collected tarantulas in her yard.
As we became friends, I was invited insider for lunch. She showed me the little Golden Guide to Birds where she and her kids kept a list of yard birds. Cuckoo, white-throat sparrow, Baltimore Orioles in the oaks – that sort of thing. A serious yard list of over 50 species, with a pair of what amounted to opera glasses. And when my own bird books were published, she kept them in the same honored place with the Golden Guide. She gave me the Leitz binoculars her father used for bird watching.
That was 30 years ago. She passed just short of her 100^th. On last Sunday’s CBC, when we went up Palmer Street west of the stadium, her house was gone. Where she parked her old VW bug “Alexander” – which she drove delivering meals to shut-ins she called “my old people” – gone. Native sandstone flowerbeds I weeded -- gone. Big spreading post oaks – gone. Both lots dozed to bare dirt.

I am reminded, not of eternity, but ephemerality. Our restless universe constantly reclaims. A kind, artistic woman once lived here. Like the stone tools of ancient ways, it remains that she saw something in me that I had not yet seen in myself.