‘Aflockalypse’ now: Hundreds of turtle doves die in Italy
Hundreds of lifeless turtle doves “hung from trees like Christmas balls” through an Italian city in the latest mass death of animals across the globe, an animal-rights group reports.
The World Wildlife Fund-Italy scooped up 300 birds, with blue-stained beaks, from across the city of Faenza for analysis, GeaPress reported Friday. The state forestry department collected other dead or nearly dead specimens that had lain “in heaps in the flower beds (or) crushed in the streets.”
The blue stain, GeaPress reported, “is a sign of hypoxia, caused by suffocation” but could also be potassium cyanide, a poison used by poachers.
“Never before this year” has a mass death such as this happened, said WWF Italy president Giorgio Tramonti. Pollution controls on industry in the region are poor, he said, and the dove deaths are “not normal.”
Italy’s tumbling turtle doves joined a mountain of dead animals piling up from New Zealand to Sweden, as a new Google map plotting the carnage shows.
The phenomenon started on New Year’s Eve with thousands of red-winged blackbirds dropping from the skies over Beebe, Ark.
From there, it was 40,000 crabs washing up on chalk reefs off Kent, England, dead penguins and petrels in New Zealand, 50 to 100 jackdaws on a street in Falköping, Sweden, 150 tonnes of farmed red tilapia in Vietnam, and about 100 tonnes of sardines and catfish on the beaches of Paranagua, Brazil.
“It’s like a plane crash,” Canadian conservation expert Steven Price told the Star in explaining the sudden public fascination with mass animal deaths.
“The reports are dramatic,” he said. “It’s a natural human response to be concerned. If we feel badly, and most people do about these deaths, let’s go where the suffering is the greatest.”
At least 50 million birds die every year in North America from the combined threat of colliding with buildings, pesticides and predator cats — all preventable deaths, said Price, senior director of conservation science and practice of the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
“Because they happen in ones and twos,” the deaths don’t attract the same attention, he said.
Washington Post writer Melissa Bell has coined the name Aflockalypse for the reported mass deaths, which are largely concentrated in the United States and Europe.
The Arkansas birds “died of impact force to their bodies,” said Scott Wright, chief of disease investigations at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc. Fireworks probably startled them from their perches.
“It's believed that the noise startled them — they are poor night flyers — and they were in close proximity to neighbourhoods, and they flew into homes and cars,” Wright told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Fireworks and cold weather were also traced to the Swedish bird kill, and being “spooked by a boat (or) a bald eagle” sent hundreds of mud hens in Texas to their deaths.
“People get a little bit nervous,” said Texas parks and wildlife biologist Charlie Muller.
“It happens every year again, generally not that many birds, (but) nothing out of the ordinary
The World Wildlife Fund-Italy scooped up 300 birds, with blue-stained beaks, from across the city of Faenza for analysis, GeaPress reported Friday. The state forestry department collected other dead or nearly dead specimens that had lain “in heaps in the flower beds (or) crushed in the streets.”
The blue stain, GeaPress reported, “is a sign of hypoxia, caused by suffocation” but could also be potassium cyanide, a poison used by poachers.
“Never before this year” has a mass death such as this happened, said WWF Italy president Giorgio Tramonti. Pollution controls on industry in the region are poor, he said, and the dove deaths are “not normal.”
Italy’s tumbling turtle doves joined a mountain of dead animals piling up from New Zealand to Sweden, as a new Google map plotting the carnage shows.
The phenomenon started on New Year’s Eve with thousands of red-winged blackbirds dropping from the skies over Beebe, Ark.
From there, it was 40,000 crabs washing up on chalk reefs off Kent, England, dead penguins and petrels in New Zealand, 50 to 100 jackdaws on a street in Falköping, Sweden, 150 tonnes of farmed red tilapia in Vietnam, and about 100 tonnes of sardines and catfish on the beaches of Paranagua, Brazil.
“It’s like a plane crash,” Canadian conservation expert Steven Price told the Star in explaining the sudden public fascination with mass animal deaths.
“The reports are dramatic,” he said. “It’s a natural human response to be concerned. If we feel badly, and most people do about these deaths, let’s go where the suffering is the greatest.”
At least 50 million birds die every year in North America from the combined threat of colliding with buildings, pesticides and predator cats — all preventable deaths, said Price, senior director of conservation science and practice of the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
“Because they happen in ones and twos,” the deaths don’t attract the same attention, he said.
Washington Post writer Melissa Bell has coined the name Aflockalypse for the reported mass deaths, which are largely concentrated in the United States and Europe.
The Arkansas birds “died of impact force to their bodies,” said Scott Wright, chief of disease investigations at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc. Fireworks probably startled them from their perches.
“It's believed that the noise startled them — they are poor night flyers — and they were in close proximity to neighbourhoods, and they flew into homes and cars,” Wright told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Fireworks and cold weather were also traced to the Swedish bird kill, and being “spooked by a boat (or) a bald eagle” sent hundreds of mud hens in Texas to their deaths.
“People get a little bit nervous,” said Texas parks and wildlife biologist Charlie Muller.
“It happens every year again, generally not that many birds, (but) nothing out of the ordinary
lmao!
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