Hacker News Reader

Comment by Scaevolus | Hacker News Reader

A swarm of 3000 starlings descending in the days before the farmers pick the berries probably aren't providing much pest control.

View on HN

Right, so the million dollar question is "what species of bird are we talking about". rmason didn't specify.

Maybe not for the farmer, but how about the general region? What we don’t know about complex interconnects in ecosystems could fill volumes, but we still are happy to disrupt that system for profit. Sometimes we try to disrupt it for seemingly good reasons, like reducing the impact of a disease by killing vectors, only later to discover said vector was also a pollinator.

We’re just too ignorant to be trusted with levers of questionable power over such a complex system.

@vvanders: I hate to break it to you, but raspberries aren’t native to the Americas either. Calling one species invasive while ignoring the plethora of other species which have no significant history in a place is just a word game. In fact raspberries can be classed as invasive, but so what? Raspberries got about a 100 year head start on the starling, so they’re grandfathered in? Feh.

I would hope and assume that the starlings can and have survived without the rich pickings of farmers' fields.

Maybe, but if we continue to build over what we don’t destroy outright, maybe not. Farmer’s fields used to be wild land, along with highways, cities, suburbs, clear cut forests, mines, office parks, etc. Those same birds also have to cope with dwindling insect populations, toxic runoff, pollution, loss of biodiversity, along with habitat loss. It’s sort of like saying that gulls should be able to thrive without trailing fishing boats or stealing our sandwiches, but of course that ignores how overfishing has crushed their food sources.

I’ve been driving through farmland in central North America recently and have been struck by the lack of insects. 30 years ago, a windshield grew thick with locusts and who knows what... not now. In hundreds of miles of backroads saw couple deer and several mice.

It also shocking how little land was left forested and I utilized for agriculture, in a way wildlife could still use the land, in areas like Nebraska (maybe 2-3% and usually only if it can’t be used for crops or cattle). And where they have left patches of forest, it’s used as a hunting area.

Forrests will be relegated to zoos soon enough.

Nebraska was deforested at least a century ago.

Starlings are generally invasive species and not part of the natural ecosystem in most cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com