http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wamc/local-wamc-976535.mp3
Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Dr. John Fitzpatrick of Cornell University explains what we can learn about climate change by observing Snowy Owls.
John Fitzpatrick is Executive Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. Fitzpatrick oversees the lab's efforts to understand birds and other wildlife and to involve the public in scientific discovery and conservation.
Dr. John Fitzpatrick - Snowy Owls
Snowy Owls are big, beautiful birds, with piercing golden eyes and enough star-power to make it in Hollywood. The fictional young wizard, Harry Potter, has a magical familiar named "Hedwig" a Snowy Owl that stays by his side and often delivers important messages. In real life, we too can receive messages from Snowy Owls IF we listen. These birds breed on the high arctic tundra, a region of the earth that is exceptionally vulnerable to climate change.
Denver Holt -- at the Owl Research Institute in Montana -- has been studying Snowy Owls in Alaska for 20 years. He's found that a whopping 90 per cent of the owl's diet is made up of lemmings - basically a miniature, short-tailed rat. Lemming populations fluctuate widely from year to year in response to environmental variables, and if climate change begins to reduce their numbers, Snowy Owls will be the first in the arctic food chain to feel it. It's very difficult to do a head count on the lemmings, but pretty easy to keep track of large, flamboyant owls that hunt in the daytime. This means that keeping track of the owls' numbers through the years provides a useful barometer for the arctic ecosystem.
It takes patience and endurance to do long-term studies like this. But we need to do them if we want to achieve a balance with the natural world. We need to listen to the Snowy Owl, and to lots of other such "indicator species." I believe that humans are, very gradually, moving toward a world in which we live side by side with stable natural systems. But if that world is to come about, we can't do all the talking. We have to listen listen to what the birds are saying listen to the Snowy Owls of the arctic--before their voices fall silent like so many others have, before we started listening.