May 19, 2021 12:20 PM EDT
DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA - MAY 15: A Purple Gallinule wades through the Wakodahatchee Wetlands on May 15, 2021 in Delray Beach, Florida.
(Photo : Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
The idea of counting all the wild birds in the world sounds as impossible as counting every single strand on a person s head. However, as computing technology gets more advanced, so does data accuracy.
Thus, it is why the research group behind popular bird watching site eBird have boldly proclaimed that planet Earth currently has around 50 billion birds living in the wild today. This was the result of over two decades of managing one of the internet s most popular bird watching platforms and opens the door to using the same approach when monitoring populations of other species.
May 08, 2021 07:00 AM EDT
PAGE, AZ - MARCH 24: A rare and endangered California condor pecks at a discarded beer can in Marble Gorge, east of Grand Canyon National Park, on March 24, 2007 west of Page, Arizona. Condor managers taking blood samples from the 57 wild condors in Arizona both before and after hunting season find that all 57 condors test positive for contamination by lead matching the isotropic fingerprint of the lead commonly used in ammunition, and that those levels rise significantly by the end of the season. Many of the condors become so sick that biologists must re-capture them for lead-poisoning treatments. Several die each year. Experts believe the condors are ingesting the lead as they scavenge gut piles left behind hunters because lead bullets shatter and fragment inside the kill. Officials in Arizona are encouraging hunters to use copper bullets instead of lead-based ammunition and in California, a coalition of conservation groups has sued the California Fish an