Deadly stats on bird mortality

HOW many birds die as a result of human activities each year?

Canadian government scientists claim 269 million birds are killed by people, directly or indirectly, each year in Canada and two million nests are destroyed. The figures come from 10 papers published in a special edition of Avian Conservation & Ecology. Our birds, with some exceptions, are not the same as theirs and the climate is more severe there. However, Irish and Canadian birds face similar challenges.

Canada has 8.5m house cats and 1.4m to 4.2m feral cats. These kill between 100m and 350m birds each year, according to Peter Blancher of the National Wildlife Centre in Ottawa. Feral cats account for about 59% of kills. Cats, Blancher believes, ‘are probably the largest human-related source of bird mortality in Canada’.