Direct Mortality of Birds from Anthropogenic Causes

Abstract

Understanding and reversing the widespread population declines of birds require estimating the magnitude of all mortality sources. Numerous anthropogenic mortality sources directly kill birds. Cause-specific annual mortality in the United States varies from billions (cat predation) to hundreds of millions (building and automobile collisions), tens of millions (power line collisions), millions (power line electrocutions, communication tower collisions), and hundreds of thousands (wind turbine collisions). However, great uncertainty exists about the independent and cumulative impacts of this mortality on avian populations. To facilitate this understanding, additional research is needed to estimate mortality for individual bird species and affected populations, to sample mortality throughout the annual cycle to inform full life-cycle population models, and to develop models that clarify the degree to which multiple mortality sources are additive or compensatory. We review sources of direct anthropogenic mortality in relation to the fundamental ecological objective of disentangling how mortality sources affect animal populations.

Bird Collisions in a Railway Crossing a Wetland of International Importance (Sado Estuary, Portugal)

“…2). Our results, together with those previous studies, suggest that the risk associated with railways may be relatively low compared to other anthropogenic sources of mortality (Loss et al 2015), although differences are difficult to judge precisely, because of the variation in methodological approaches and ecological contexts. Nevertheless‚ it is worth noting that there were many more collisions where railways crossed wetland habitats, suggesting that the planning of new railways should strive to avoid these habitats as much as possible.…”

“…Collision with human structures and vehicles is an important source of wild bird mortality, killing hundreds of millions of birds each year (Loss et al 2015). Although the population-level consequences of such mortality are poorly known (but see, e.g., Carrete et al 2009;Borda-de-Água et al 2014), it is generally recognized under the precautionary principle that efforts should be made to reduce the number of birds killed each year as much as possible (Loss et al 2015).…”

“…Although the population-level consequences of such mortality are poorly known (but see, e.g., Carrete et al 2009;Borda-de-Água et al 2014), it is generally recognized under the precautionary principle that efforts should be made to reduce the number of birds killed each year as much as possible (Loss et al 2015). Information is thus needed on the bird species most vulnerable to collisions, and on the environmental and species-specific factors affecting such vulnerability (Barrios and Rodríguez 2004;Santos et al 2016), which are essential for developing management guidelines aimed at reducing collision risk (Barrientos et al 2011;May et al 2015).…”

“…To collect baseline information for mitigating impacts, bird collision risk has been the subject of intensive research over the past two decades (Loss et al 2015), with many studies documenting bird mortality and its correlates in relation to roads (Santos et al 2016), wind farms (Barrios and Rodríguez 2004;Drewitt and Langston 2006), power lines (Barrientos et al 2011(Barrientos et al , 2012, and buildings (Loss et al 2015). Surprisingly, however, very few studies have analyzed bird collision in relation to railways, although these linear infrastructures extend over tens of thousands of kilometers across the world (see Chap.…”

Comportamento de voo de aves em resposta ao uso de sinalizadores em linhas de transmissão de energia elétrica

“…Linhas de transmissão são uma das principais causas de mortalidade de aves por colisão com obstáculos artifi ciais (Erickson et al, 2005;Drewitt & Langston, 2008;Loss et al, 2015), constituindo um problema de conservação principalmente para pequenas populações (Bevanger, 1998;Martínez et al, 2016).…”