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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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.