Silence of the Songbirds by Bridget Stutchbury (2007) serves as a course text that highlights several important topics related to bird conservation. Throughout the semester, students will read select chapters and compose responses to the readings. Groups of students will also further investigate conservation topics by finding primary literature publications pertaining to the issues discussed in the text. Below is a student response to a research topic related to the chapter titled “Living on the Edge”:
Build Slowly, Build Smartly
By Paul Komuves
When you think about the term urban-planning, what comes to mind? A new multi-storied mall, maybe some small new apartments or condominiums, or even just a new stop light being added to an increasingly busy intersection. Any of these kinds of developments can be seen locally, but they have extremely different impacts on the environment and the local or migratory creatures that depended on it. It comes down to the impactful footprint of each design, and with what consideration has been kept for the environment.
What does it take for a new mall to come into being? A huge area of land to be cleared, plumbing and electricity to be run, and sufficient parking, and additional roads to reach the establishment. This is even more so when being planned for a new suburb. This kind of urbanization is called sprawling development. It is a wide-ranged slash-and-burn of the natural environment and is replaced with concrete and leaky cars. Even if some trees are planted for the enjoyment of the people, the result is a far cry from the healthy ecosystems that existed in the tall grasslands or thick forests that had once been there. In contrast, construction with smaller individual footprints that are sprinkled over a larger area are called compact developments. A study published by J.R. Sushinsky and her colleagues sought to identify this impact on local bird populations in Brisbane, Australia, and not only for local and migratory birds, but for nonnatives that can’t help but thrive around people. By splitting Brisbane up into segments that displayed a gradient of development strategies and human population densities and comparing them to bird species counts of each area, it is predicted that the sprawling developments are the most likely to result in the most species extinctions, and even with the introduction of invasive species like Rock doves, that overall populations will drop.
Figure 1. A contrast between predicted extinction and colonization of bird species with compact development being represented on the left (a), and sprawling development on the right (b)
Rather than develop an entire community in one fell swoop, it is direly important that urban planners decrease their impact by creating more, small cells that are well-distanced from each other rather than ones that will envelop an entire valley or coast line, for example. The spread of urbanization needs to be slower and more deliberate, because while it takes infinitely more effort to replant a forest than build a town, the former inhabitants can’t so easily be replaced.