How do these numbers compare to the number of chickens, turkeys, and ducks killed in animal agriculture? I think those are human-related deaths, so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included. (I would assume they blow these numbers out of the water)
Obviously the intention here is “human related wild bird deaths”, but I think it betrays a pretty huge blind spot to title the graph in this way and miss ~90% of all human related bird deaths.
I think the concern isn’t just that birds die, but overall species health. If we doubled turkey death, the assumption would be we doubled turkey pop first. With wild birds we don’t have that assumption
It’s mostly a safe assumption for wild birds, too, though, and for similar reasons. It’s easier to find a young oblivious bird, or a desperately hungry bird taking a risk in a less protected feeding spot, to snack on if the population is healthy, and when the population is smaller there is less predation because they all fit within the safe feeding areas. If a wild population is large, there will be more deaths due to disease (which spreads faster in crowded conditions), and more deaths from hunger as they outstrip their food sources. If the population is kept in check more by predators than by disease or hunger, it’s generally not a threat to the size of the population.
There are some specific locations that have certain animal populations actually under threat by domestic cats, but those are almost all ground animals and not birds.
I believe that chickens and other farm birds account for something like 50-60% of all the birds alive at any given time.
With some very hand-wavy maths I’d say its at least a 10x increase. ~50+ billion slaughtered for food vs ~4 billion from outdoor cats. Don’t quote me on that, they’re just the first two numbers I came across.
I’d argue it’s somewhat fair to exclude agriculture from the original chart because the damage cats do to wild bird populations is off the charts and owners should recognise that reality.
How do these numbers compare to the number of chickens, turkeys, and ducks killed in animal agriculture? I think those are human-related deaths, so it’s a bit odd to me they’re not included. (I would assume they blow these numbers out of the water)
It’s not actually, since that isn’t what the graph is about.
Obviously the intention here is “human related wild bird deaths”, but I think it betrays a pretty huge blind spot to title the graph in this way and miss ~90% of all human related bird deaths.
I think the concern isn’t just that birds die, but overall species health. If we doubled turkey death, the assumption would be we doubled turkey pop first. With wild birds we don’t have that assumption
It’s mostly a safe assumption for wild birds, too, though, and for similar reasons. It’s easier to find a young oblivious bird, or a desperately hungry bird taking a risk in a less protected feeding spot, to snack on if the population is healthy, and when the population is smaller there is less predation because they all fit within the safe feeding areas. If a wild population is large, there will be more deaths due to disease (which spreads faster in crowded conditions), and more deaths from hunger as they outstrip their food sources. If the population is kept in check more by predators than by disease or hunger, it’s generally not a threat to the size of the population.
There are some specific locations that have certain animal populations actually under threat by domestic cats, but those are almost all ground animals and not birds.
I believe that chickens and other farm birds account for something like 50-60% of all the birds alive at any given time.
With some very hand-wavy maths I’d say its at least a 10x increase. ~50+ billion slaughtered for food vs ~4 billion from outdoor cats. Don’t quote me on that, they’re just the first two numbers I came across.
I’d argue it’s somewhat fair to exclude agriculture from the original chart because the damage cats do to wild bird populations is off the charts and owners should recognise that reality.