Where have all the birds gone?

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Staff: Paul Colvin, May May Gong, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $6 per year Francisco, CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Action, 3435 Army RATES: For one year (12 issues)—U.S. 2nd Class: $6, 1st Class: $9; Canada and Mexico 2nd Class: $9, Ist Class: $12; All other countries 2nd Class: $12, 1st Class: $24. (Canada money orders or checks should be in Joseph Ryan: 'No on the Missouri' 2 SOCIALIST AC NOI. OCTOBER I recently walked over 100 miles through the river valleys of the Wye and the Usk in South Wales. I was never alone. Armadas of swans and geese were everywhere. Huge grey herons waded through the shallows.

As I climbed from the waterways onto the upland moors, grouse and pheasants skurried into the brush. Hawks and kites wheeled overhead. At sunset, the gorges of the Black Mountains were filled with birdsong.

Almost unbelievably, these creatures that gave me so much pleasure are under attack. In Wales, their habitat is being systematically reduced by pollution, timber cutting, and intensive farming techniques.

Since the end of the Second World War, for example, Wales has lost 41 percent of its moorland, placing a great strain on the birds that normally feed and nest there. The heather moorland has been replaced by pasture for the wool and mutton industry. Commercial timber forests have replaced the thickets where pheasants and partridges used to find cover.

I spoke to Peter Evans, a noted ornithologist at the Edward Grey Institute in Oxford. Evans, a Welshman, told me that acid rain is having substantial effects on the bird population in his country. "The acidity of the rivers is changing," he said. "Stonefly, mayfly, and mosquito larvae, industrial pollution to carry as far as Scandinavia and Germany. Filters are available for the smokestacks, but the filters, Evans points out, "cost money and would cut into profits."

Facing extinction

The first fully documented extinction of a bird species was in 1680, when the last giant dodo bird was wiped out. Since that year, about 130 species and local races of birds have been eliminated. The demise of at least half of them was due to the activities of people (hunting, destruction of habitat, and the introduction of diseases and poisons).

We can expect that the rate of extinction will accelerate in the near future if pollution and destruction of the environment are allowed to continue. This will, in turn, have further "I urge San Franciscans to vote against Propositions S and R this November," said Joseph Ryan, Socialist Action candidate for the the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. "Prop. S will smooth the way for the U.S. Navy to homeport the battleship Missouri in the city. Prop. R will likewise welcome the Navy, but asks for a slightly better deal."

Ryan was speaking at an Oct. 1 public speakout against homeporting the nuclear-armed battleship in San Francisco, sponsored by the local branch of Socialist Action.

He was joined at the podium by Saul Bloom, executive director of the Arms Control Research Center, and Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation.

Ryan refuted supporters of the ballot measures who insist that the Missouri will mean more jobs. He rapidly since 1980—and could vanish in several years. These include some of the best known backyard singers—the woodthrush, the red-eyed vireo, and the scarlet tanager.

The destruction of the tropical rainforests has a great deal to do with the decline in the bird population. About half of the world's species of birds, and three-quarters of all North American species, migrate to winter quarters in the tropics. The Nature Conservancy estimates that 74,000 acres of tropical rainforest are cleared around the world every day.

Cheap hamburgers

I remember when, almost 25 years ago, I saw the coast of Haiti from the deck of a ship. Haiti looked like an emerald rising from the sea-covered with pointed out that "many more plumbers, electricians, and carpenters could be employed for a longer period of time building the low-cost housing that the area desperately needs."

"I support jobs for construction, not destruction!" Ryan said. "The homeporting represents an attempt to further militarize San Francisco at a time when the labor movement, peace activists, and the oppressed communities have been demanding money for jobs, not war."

Ryan criticized the San Francisco Labor Council for supporting the Navy's plan. Such support, Ryan said, puts the labor movement in the same camp as the the local banks, real estate developers,, and the U.S. Navy-one of the biggest employers of non-union labor in the country.

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lush forests. Now, I am told, 95 percent of the tree cover in Haiti has been felled, as its population attempts to eke out a living from the land.

This pattern of despoliation is Joseph Ryan In San Francisco this November, vote against the Missouri. Vote for human needs, not profits. Vote for the socialist alternative: Joe Ryan for Board of Supervisors and Sylvia Weinstein for Board of Education. represent being repeated throughout the Caribbean and South America. It is directly tied to the drive for profits by U.S. corporations.

Forests are cleared mainly to provide pasture for cattle. The meat is then exported to the United States. A hamburger made from Latin American cattle costs five cents less than domestic beef. The reason? The Latin American campesinos, often impoverished, can be hired for a fraction of the wages paid in the United States.

According to the Rainforest Alliance, one acre of tropical forest must be cleared for every five pounds of beef produced each year! Other forest tracts are destroyed to make way for coffee, banana, and sugar plantationsmost of them either owned or controlled by U.S. corporations.

The U.S. capitalist class has created a tragedy of underdevelopment in the countries of Latin America. Now, as ecological catastrophe arrives on our doorstep (to use Malcolm X's phrase) the chickens are coming home to roost! The songbirds, sadly, may not be so fortunate. I