Passage 2
Birds are a critical part of our ecological system. But more than ever, birds are threatened byhuman pollution and climate change.
We need the birds to eat insects, move seeds and pollen around, transfer nutrients from sea toland, clean up after the mass death of the annual Pacific salmon runs, or when a wild animal fallsanywhere in a field or forest.
How could we enjoy spring without the birds flitting busily in our garden or dropping by tocheck out the flowers in our urban window box Can you contemplate America without the soaringbald eagle, or even those scavengers like the pigeons and gulls that clean up discarded food scrapson our city streets and waterfronts How diminished our lives would be without them
Scavenging eagles and condors need hunters to behave responsibly and bury, or remove, theremains of any shot deer peppered with fragments of lead bullets. Loons, ducks and other water birdswill be poisoned by lead bullets and lead fishing sinkers if we allow such objects to drop in theirfeeding space.
All sea and shore birds, even the puffins and guillemots of the otherwise pristine Aleutians,need us to make sure that no other heavy metals, like mercury and cadmium, are dumped in riversand make their way across the oceans.
Birds like the terns, knots and shearwaters that migrate between the far north and deep, deep,south of our planet need people everywhere to cease and desist from filling in their wetland fuelstops and rest stations, and from constructing golfing resorts and factories in their feeding andbreeding grounds.
Seabirds are among the most endangered vertebrate species on the planet, with the InternationalUnion for Conservation of Nature classifying 97 species as globally threatened, and 17 in the highestcategory of critically threatened. Of greatest concern are the pelicans of the southern oceans and thespectacular, but slow-breeding albatross.
Plastic bags must be eliminated from natural
A.Birds
B.Flowers
C.Food scrapes
D.Scavengers