Interesting. But is it just another scare story?
But I went to the Audubon site and made a graph for a search on "Moorhen". The table showed a drop about 1980 to 0. Then I did a search on "American Coot". The table showed that the count for Coots had risen from 318 in 1980 to 634 in 2006. The bird she was pointing at in the video was a Coot and the Moorhen would be a rare bird in Ontario in any time period, as is the coot.
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/i2210id.html
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i2190id.html
Near the end of the video, one of the ladies mentions Hermit Thrush in Nova Scotia. The Audubon site shows a count of 0 in 1980 and a count of 87 in 2006 in the province of Nova Scotia.
I wonder what the empirical data supports the claims made in the video. The historical data at Audubon indicates species are increasing in numbers overall.
Try some yourself at:
http://www.audubon.org/bird/cbc/hr/index.html
Also the trends here are mostly positive:
http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/bbs.html
There was a huge study in 2004 that projected a large increase in the loss of species and the increase in the numbers of threatened species. Perhaps, the basis for the video was a misinterpretation of that work. You can read about it at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 023334.htm
Cheers,
Dennis