Killing me slowly/rev XXX

Biodiversity, you know, having enough flora and fauna to keep earth and us alive, is rather important to sustain unless one is in pursuit of money, an activity proving to be most disquieting in light of the fact 29% of all the birds in America (and Europe) have disappeared since 1969 as articulated in an NYTimes piece Birds Are Vanishing From North America

Baltimore Oriole

Gary Mueller, Macaulay Library at Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The new study was not designed to determine why birds are disappearing, but the results — as well as earlier research — point to some likely culprits, Dr. Rosenberg said.

Grassland species have suffered the biggest declines by far, having lost 717 million birds. These birds have probably been decimated by modern agriculture and development.

“Every field that’s plowed under, and every wetland area that’s drained, you lose the birds in that area,” Dr. Rosenberg said.

In addition to habitat loss, pesticides may have taken a toll. A study published last week, for example, found that pesticides called neonicotinoids make it harder for birds to put on weight needed for migration, delaying their travel.

But insects are in trouble also.

An annual decline of 5.2% in flying insect biomass found in nature reserves in Germany
 – about 75% loss in 26 years.[1]

Several studies report what appears to be a substantial decline in insect populations. Some of the insects most affected include bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies. Anecdotal evidence has been offered of much greater apparent abundance of insects in the 20th century; recollections of the windscreen phenomenon are an example.[2]

Possible causes of the decline have been identified as habitat destruction, including intensive agriculture, the use of pesticides (particularly insecticides), urbanization, and industrialization; introduced species; and climate change.[3] Not all insect orders are affected in the same way; many groups are the subject of limited research, and comparative figures from earlier decades are often not available. The decline of the scientific field of entomology may also be contributing to errors in data analysis and overgeneralization from limited findings, resulting in exaggeration of the decline in insect populations.

In 2018 the German government initiated an "Action Programme for Insect Protection",[4][5] and in 2019 a group of 27 British entomologists and ecologists wrote an open letter calling on the research establishment in the UK "to enable intensive investigation of the real threat of ecological disruption caused by insect declines without delay".[6]

And we haven't even discussed the decline of life in the oceans due to pollution, climate change and overfishing.