[Music]
you
I’ve spent the better part of 20 years
studying flying animals mostly birds and
the air spaces they occupy so I’m an
ecologist of the air a narrow ecologist
if you will and I’d like to talk with
you about habitat in the way we think
about and perceive habitats know habitat
is one of our most important and
fundamental concepts in ecology how we
interpret habitats influences not only
the science of ecology it influences
Environmental Policy species management
and conservation and not least the law
so when we change our understanding of
habitats the consequences can be
far-reaching for this reason my goal in
part is to illustrate to you how the air
space is every bit of habitat as a
forest or a stream and that it’s in our
self-interest to care about and perhaps
even preserve air space is much like we
might preserve a forest or a stream as a
means of protecting our our natural
heritage so if you search Google Images
for the word sky you see something like
this where the sky is actually used as
back you know it’s a background it’s a
backdrop used to highlight other things
like clouds and trees we even speak this
way not a cloud in the sky the Sun is
high in the sky people taking pictures
of the sky aren’t taking pictures of
empty airspace and why should they its
features are largely invisible to us we
don’t really sense the airspace we are
of the earth we are evolved as visual
creatures that live life on a flat
surface that for millions of years has
been a reliable source of food and
security to natively perceive the
airspace requires perhaps a different
set of senses and a brain wired to life
in three dimensions so to us the air
space can seem like a pretty bleak and
empty place but nothing could be further
from the truth so try to imagine
variation in wind speed and temperature
moisture wind speed and direction
moisture and temperature gradients
changing air densities
oder polarize light gravity magnetic
fields all these things are going on up
there okay and well they may not mean
much to us in many respects to animals
that spend their lives in the air
they’re important now there’s a lot of
life up there there are more than a
thousand species of bats and ten times
that many species of birds and untold
numbers of insects and among all this
aro fauna if you will the common Swift
and it’s a really a pretty drab bird
despite this kind of striking and cool
image by Noel Kimmel Larry has some
interesting biology this bird has been
documented to remain in flight
continuously for up to 10 months at a
time without landing so are we to
believe that the common Swift is
spending 80 percent percent of its life
outside habitat and if so what do we
call that place that it’s in turns out
that the airspace actually satisfies the
most widely cited definitions of
habitats which boil down to two main
parts its place animals occupy that
provide resources for survival now those
resources polarized light and magnetic
fields and winds they may seem unusual
to us but their resources nonetheless –
flying animals okay now we can put small
data loggers on on these Swift’s and
learn something about their behavior
aloft but the sky the airspace is an
enormous place what’s happening at
larger scales what’s the bigger picture
so it turns out that our system of
weather radars which can detect all
flavor precipitation these things detect
birds and bats and insects just fine I
mean what is a bird it’s really just a
giant raindrop right okay a concerted
effort is made to scrub or remove all
this biology from images like this so as
not to confuse the public but this is
what it looks like when we put the
biology back in okay this is what the
radars are really seeing these so-called
weather radars
detect more biology than they do whether
bird migration events like this not the
other one but this lay like a blanket
over much of North America okay so I’d
like to spend a few minutes taking a
closer look at Southeast Wisconsin head
image that was just up and this is a
waterfowl migration is seen by a weather
radar but when we look at an image like
this I mean what does it mean what are
these what kind of numbers are we
talking about here on this unremarkable
day ducks and geese and sandhill cranes
initiated flight toward the southeast in
over a timeframe of about four hours
50,000 Birds passed within just five
kilometers of O’Hare International
Airport
so 50,000 Birds pass just over that
yellow dot in four hours now the reason
I bring up O’Hare is to make the point
that like deer crossing the road in
front of a car planes are in bird’s
habitat aircraft collisions with birds
caused hundreds of millions of dollars
in damage annually in the US and perhaps
a billion dollars world worldwide and
contribute to some 200 wildlife related
deaths since 1988 now for those of you
who are already afraid to fly that’s the
last thing that you want to hear but
flying is perfectly safe but perhaps it
can be made safer and less expensive if
we learn more about how aircraft and
flying animals share the airspace images
like data like this can actually be used
to a forecast what bird related hazards
to to aviation much the way we would
forecast a weather-related hazard now
all this said while birds pose some
hazard you know to to humans humans pose
by far the greater hazard to birds many
species have evolved to fly about in
clutter-free space okay and as we
increasingly develop and fragment these
air spaces with our structure much as we
have the landscape we are disrupting
aerial habitats these structures likely
contribute to declines that we are
observing in
some bird and bat populations wind
turbines are estimated to kill on the
order of 350,000 Birds a year in the US
and Canada unfortunately that number is
tiny compared to the impacts of glass
bird collisions with windows may kill up
to a billion birds a year in the US
alone and now that’s a big number but
perhaps remarkably for many species the
lasting impacts of climate change are
going to far outweigh any of these other
impacts that we’ve talked about so far
so we’re probably going to have to
develop the airspace for alternative
energy as we have been doing but we can
do so in should dosoo do so in ways that
are safe for flying animals so
conservation of some species may
actually require that we preserve air
spaces much as we have preserved
terrestrial and aquatic habitats such
airspace reserves may focus on
traditional areas of activity like bat
roosts and movement corridors for
waterfowl and and geographies that tend
to concentrate bird migration and this
is where our understanding of habitats
becomes important as a legal concept
many of our environmental laws like the
Endangered Species Act or in Europe the
habitats directive rely on the habitat
concept so it is thought-provoking I
think to consider if we reinterpret
habitats to include the airspace do we
empower existing environmental habitats
based environmental law to include vast
new areas that might otherwise not be
considered for preservation Thanks
[Applause]
you
I’ve spent the better part of 20 years
studying flying animals mostly birds and
the air spaces they occupy so I’m an
ecologist of the air a narrow ecologist
if you will and I’d like to talk with
you about habitat in the way we think
about and perceive habitats know habitat
is one of our most important and
fundamental concepts in ecology how we
interpret habitats influences not only
the science of ecology it influences
Environmental Policy species management
and conservation and not least the law
so when we change our understanding of
habitats the consequences can be
far-reaching for this reason my goal in
part is to illustrate to you how the air
space is every bit of habitat as a
forest or a stream and that it’s in our
self-interest to care about and perhaps
even preserve air space is much like we
might preserve a forest or a stream as a
means of protecting our our natural
heritage so if you search Google Images
for the word sky you see something like
this where the sky is actually used as
back you know it’s a background it’s a
backdrop used to highlight other things
like clouds and trees we even speak this
way not a cloud in the sky the Sun is
high in the sky people taking pictures
of the sky aren’t taking pictures of
empty airspace and why should they its
features are largely invisible to us we
don’t really sense the airspace we are
of the earth we are evolved as visual
creatures that live life on a flat
surface that for millions of years has
been a reliable source of food and
security to natively perceive the
airspace requires perhaps a different
set of senses and a brain wired to life
in three dimensions so to us the air
space can seem like a pretty bleak and
empty place but nothing could be further
from the truth so try to imagine
variation in wind speed and temperature
moisture wind speed and direction
moisture and temperature gradients
changing air densities
oder polarize light gravity magnetic
fields all these things are going on up
there okay and well they may not mean
much to us in many respects to animals
that spend their lives in the air
they’re important now there’s a lot of
life up there there are more than a
thousand species of bats and ten times
that many species of birds and untold
numbers of insects and among all this
aro fauna if you will the common Swift
and it’s a really a pretty drab bird
despite this kind of striking and cool
image by Noel Kimmel Larry has some
interesting biology this bird has been
documented to remain in flight
continuously for up to 10 months at a
time without landing so are we to
believe that the common Swift is
spending 80 percent percent of its life
outside habitat and if so what do we
call that place that it’s in turns out
that the airspace actually satisfies the
most widely cited definitions of
habitats which boil down to two main
parts its place animals occupy that
provide resources for survival now those
resources polarized light and magnetic
fields and winds they may seem unusual
to us but their resources nonetheless –
flying animals okay now we can put small
data loggers on on these Swift’s and
learn something about their behavior
aloft but the sky the airspace is an
enormous place what’s happening at
larger scales what’s the bigger picture
so it turns out that our system of
weather radars which can detect all
flavor precipitation these things detect
birds and bats and insects just fine I
mean what is a bird it’s really just a
giant raindrop right okay a concerted
effort is made to scrub or remove all
this biology from images like this so as
not to confuse the public but this is
what it looks like when we put the
biology back in okay this is what the
radars are really seeing these so-called
weather radars
detect more biology than they do whether
bird migration events like this not the
other one but this lay like a blanket
over much of North America okay so I’d
like to spend a few minutes taking a
closer look at Southeast Wisconsin head
image that was just up and this is a
waterfowl migration is seen by a weather
radar but when we look at an image like
this I mean what does it mean what are
these what kind of numbers are we
talking about here on this unremarkable
day ducks and geese and sandhill cranes
initiated flight toward the southeast in
over a timeframe of about four hours
50,000 Birds passed within just five
kilometers of O’Hare International
Airport
so 50,000 Birds pass just over that
yellow dot in four hours now the reason
I bring up O’Hare is to make the point
that like deer crossing the road in
front of a car planes are in bird’s
habitat aircraft collisions with birds
caused hundreds of millions of dollars
in damage annually in the US and perhaps
a billion dollars world worldwide and
contribute to some 200 wildlife related
deaths since 1988 now for those of you
who are already afraid to fly that’s the
last thing that you want to hear but
flying is perfectly safe but perhaps it
can be made safer and less expensive if
we learn more about how aircraft and
flying animals share the airspace images
like data like this can actually be used
to a forecast what bird related hazards
to to aviation much the way we would
forecast a weather-related hazard now
all this said while birds pose some
hazard you know to to humans humans pose
by far the greater hazard to birds many
species have evolved to fly about in
clutter-free space okay and as we
increasingly develop and fragment these
air spaces with our structure much as we
have the landscape we are disrupting
aerial habitats these structures likely
contribute to declines that we are
observing in
some bird and bat populations wind
turbines are estimated to kill on the
order of 350,000 Birds a year in the US
and Canada unfortunately that number is
tiny compared to the impacts of glass
bird collisions with windows may kill up
to a billion birds a year in the US
alone and now that’s a big number but
perhaps remarkably for many species the
lasting impacts of climate change are
going to far outweigh any of these other
impacts that we’ve talked about so far
so we’re probably going to have to
develop the airspace for alternative
energy as we have been doing but we can
do so in should dosoo do so in ways that
are safe for flying animals so
conservation of some species may
actually require that we preserve air
spaces much as we have preserved
terrestrial and aquatic habitats such
airspace reserves may focus on
traditional areas of activity like bat
roosts and movement corridors for
waterfowl and and geographies that tend
to concentrate bird migration and this
is where our understanding of habitats
becomes important as a legal concept
many of our environmental laws like the
Endangered Species Act or in Europe the
habitats directive rely on the habitat
concept so it is thought-provoking I
think to consider if we reinterpret
habitats to include the airspace do we
empower existing environmental habitats
based environmental law to include vast
new areas that might otherwise not be
considered for preservation Thanks
[Applause]
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