Why is sparrow endangered

Still, it was a thrilling moment to witness: one of the most endangered birds in the continental U. Their name comes from their call, which consists of two or three weak notes followed by an insect-like buzz.

The Florida grasshopper sparrow Ammodramus savannarum floridanus was first described in by a U. Army surgeon, Major Edgar A. Back then the birds were widespread across central and South Florida.

By the s, though, most of the prairies that form their habitat had been ditched, drained, and converted to pastures or sod production. By , the sparrow population had plummeted to a mere thousand.

By , fewer than of the little songbirds remained. And that is part of the challenge in saving them. In a last-ditch effort to save the species, federal officials decided to launch a captive-breeding program. Such programs are often expensive and labor-intensive, and sometimes they do not work.

Related: Why some question whether breeding pandas in captivity is worth the effort. In the s, something similar happened with a relative of the Florida grasshopper sparrow, a bird called the dusky seaside sparrow.

By the time federal officials decided to go ahead with captive breeding, there were only five duskies left—all of them male. The last one died in captivity at Walt Disney World in If the Florida grasshopper sparrow goes extinct, it would be the first American bird species to do so since the dusky died out 34 years ago.

No one had ever tried to breed Florida grasshopper sparrows before. In an attempt to minimize impact on the wild population, biologists decided to launch the recovery program by incubating and hatching eggs taken from nests, rather than bringing in adult birds to breed. To start, biologists practiced on a surrogate species.

They spent three years exploring captive breeding and rearing techniques on the eastern grasshopper sparrow, which is not classified as endangered. Only when they felt confident in their skills did they try the real thing. They also caught two independent juvenile birds and a pair of adults to serve as parents, who could help the captive-reared birds learn how to behave in the wild. Read about other creative ways scientists are working to save endangered species.

The eggs went into incubators at a pair of breeding facilities. Figuring out the proper temperature, humidity, and other key details for incubation took a year and required the collection of more eggs from the wild. The hardest part, Williams said in a recent interview, was the uncertainty. How much or what they needed to be fed, or even will they eat in captivity. That was what the older birds were for, to teach the younger ones those important survival skills.

But the captive breeding program soon faced a complication: In , a previously undetected intestinal parasite began spreading and killing the birds. The lead scientist with the Rare Species Conservancy, Paul Reillo, worried that releasing the birds would spread the disease to the wild population, but White Oak and government biologists argued that it was worth the risk. The dispute grew so heated that in February , the Fish and Wildlife Service ended its contract with the Rare Species Conservancy and transferred its birds to White Oak.

By , only 80 birds remained in the wild, including just 20 breeding pairs, says Craig Faulhaber, avian conservation coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. These are larger than life, magnificent creatures. Hearing their stories of extinction makes us sad. Yes, sparrows are slowly being wiped out as our malls and sleek apartment buildings come up in a 'Shining' India?

Sparrows are as important to our ecology system as tigers, as Chinese Communist dictator and sparrow mass murderer Mao Zedong foolishly found out and it is time we were worried. A small organisation called the Nature Forever Society, headed by Mohammed Dilawar, and a band of sparrow adopters may be the only protection the frail, gentle sparrow has in India today.

Dilawar, who has done his master's in environmental science and ecology and has worked for the Bombay Natural History Society, became interested in birds early on. The CBMI monitors, through detailed mapping, the 18 common bird species found across the country like the house crow, the rock pigeon, rose-ringed parakeets, Ashy Prinia a wren-warbler and the Hoopoe, in addition to the sparrow. The success of Dilawar's project rests on the group of ardent bird wallah s he has invited onto his sparrow bandwagon, across the country -- you can be one too with not much effort -- to help revive the population of this tiny brown-grey bird, which weighs hardly 40 gm.

At 6 am I am on the metro to a home in Gurgaon. Dilawar has coordinated a meeting with one of his sparrow foster moms bird adopters who has 10 feeders in her home that she supplies with 50 kg of bird feed a month or more.

She also has bird baths up and those magical nest boxes Rs that are the key to boosting populations. Sparrows are shy, elusive creatures. They feed only in the morning hours and are then mostly invisible during the day, hence the necessity to view them before 8 am. Hundreds of sparrows flood the terrace and balconies of this home, twittering gleefully, hopping from feeder to bird bath, preening themselves and generally catching up with their mates.

When you look out from the terrace and homes and areas nearby you do discover that Sparrow Central is here and it is difficult to spy congregations of sparrows elsewhere, a clear demonstration of the success of NFS's efforts. In this interview to Rediff. Why did you get interested in sparrows initially? Right from childhood, sparrows have fascinated me immensely.

During my childhood they were all over, in and around us. We had sparrows nesting everywhere in our home and in those days no one even minded them nesting inside the home. In fact, for the past 10, years sparrows have been companions to humans. They have evolved with us over a period of time and are an important and integral part of human-associated landscapes. Eight years ago, when I came across a scientific article on the decline of house sparrows in the United Kingdom, I started investigating their status in India.

To my shock I came to know we have never counted our sparrows and other common birds and there are no conservation initiatives, or will, both in the scientific community as well as at the government agencies. All these years my family has been the biggest support in this entire journey today. Our whole family has gotten involved in some way or the other and without them a lot of this would not have been possible.

They believed in me when the whole world laughed and called me crazy, because I wanted to work on sparrows and not tigers. Yes, they are. In fact, there is so much to do for them, so much to learn about them, that I think one life is not enough. The more I learn about them and the more we work for them, I realise how little we know about them.

For me, it's a lifelong passion as well as commitment. I often tell people that for me all birds are sparrows. In a way, my life revolves in and around the sparrows. Why is the house sparrow getting rarer? What are the human developmental activities disturbing the house sparrow? Human population is growing at a frantic pace. As a result, development is happening too fast, and in way which doesn't take issues like biodiversity conservation into consideration, when the construction of buildings, townships and development is undertaken.

The new buildings and landscaped gardens which are being constructed are not at all sparrow friendly. The modern glass-clad match box shape buildings do not have cavities which are important for sparrows to make nests.

We are also becoming increasingly intolerant as a species. For example, today people would not like sparrows nesting in their homes and dropping nesting material inside. The lifestyle of people has also changed. Women no longer sit outside their homes to clean grain or offer grain or chapatti , which was a daily routine once upon a time and this was a source of food for sparrows.

As the habitat and food is shrinking, so are the numbers of house sparrows. Hence, we want people to take part in the creation of alternative habitats for house sparrows by adopting nest boxes and bird feeders. The sparrows play an important role as insect controllers as they eat a phenomenal numbers of insects.

They depend exclusively on an insect diet to feed their young ones. Also as sparrows are abundant they act a food for birds of prey. If sparrows are not there, the population of birds of prey may also be affected. Apart from this, every constituent of an ecosystem is important from an ant to an elephant. We are eliminating species by species which are important links which make the web of life. The sooner we understand this, the better it will be.

Well, do you hear them anymore? Probably not. The flocks of sparrows used to be ubiquitous in neighborhoods. These little creatures of nature who accompanied us since time unknown have lost their habitat and a safe and natural environment that ensures their health.