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> http://www.flickr.com/g Hi folks, I am completely for reducing emissions, and these messages are making me realize how much more "green" i can be when birding. But what I want the most is THRIVING BIRD POPULATIONS. I'm not yet convinced that self-propelled birding is the best way to reduce our impact on birds, and at the worst, could it increase our relative impact? For recreational birding I am all for carpooling, biking and paddling! It definitely reduces emissions and makes birding entirely more enjoyable. But when birding for non-recreational surveys/studies, in deciding how much self-propelled birding to do I would be concerned with a few issues: 1. Because of increased time required to "self-propel" will it reduce the frequency and extent of our coverage and further bias our surveys to the human-tolerant species? With numerous declining bird populations, I can't justify self-propelling if it reduces quality or extent of data especially given that…. 2. Not driving while birding will not make us carbon neutral birders. My carbon emissions from other behaviours greatly outweighs direct emissions during birding trips. I drive my car 700 km a week for work, and I just got back from Thailand. As much as I love biking and would love to conduct surveys by bike, my carbon footprint would be SO MUCH less if I spent the extra time i had (from not-self propelling) by taking KingsTransit to work or arranging to carpool and waiting for my late carpool partner each day; or if I travelled closer to home. If our goal through this is to reduce impact on birds, I think initiatives such as bigby are a step in the right direction, but I would like to see more encompassing "green-birding" concepts/strategies, that prompt individuals/groups to invest in the steps that MAXIMIZE the benefit to birds based on cost/benefit comparisons among options. Given complicated new technologies etc. I don't think our intuition is as reliable anymore when weighing environmental options (e.g, check out the impact of reading paper magazines vs. subscribing to and reading them online). Thoughts? James.
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