Where have all the birds gone? And do we face a similar fate?

This is a true story about the birds, or more correctly, the lack of birds, on the U.S. Pacific Island Territory of Guam. The noticeable chirping and their “contributions” on your recently-washed car are no longer there. They are gone. So where did they go? Look as hard as you may, and you will not find the traces anywhere. What happened? Did the birds simply stop singing? Or did they go into hiding? 


The simple answer is "NO" to all of the above-mentioned questions. The real reason there are no birds on the Island of Guam is analogous to why the democrats are running amok in our beloved Republic, the United States of America. Americans must learn a lesson from the now-extinct birds of Guam.


Neither the birds nor we were aware of the dangers that exist, or the dangers that predators pose to the natural order of life. But that is still not the issue. My education is in biology and according to Webster: bi•ol•o•gy - : a branch of knowledge that deals with living organisms and vital processes,”[1] but more important is: “2 a : the plant and animal life of a region or environment …”[2] It is the environment. It is natural selection.


“Natural selection is the process by which those heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution.”[3] If an organism exhibits a trait that does not allow it to blend in, to adapt, or to give it the characteristics that enable it to survive … it’s very simple. It won’t. The organism will die, and eventually, if the species is unable to evolve, it will become extinct. It is survival of the fittest. On the other hand, if an organism does have the qualities or appearances that permit it to survive or exist, these traits will be duplicated in the offspring and these traits will be passed on until the undesirable or unsuccessful traits have been eliminated through breeding. In short, the very success and existence of a species or an organism is predicated on its ability to live, survive, reproduce, and pass on the desired traits to its offspring.

Many years ago, Guam was a beautiful island paradise with abundant wildlife, especially birds. And then one day, something happened. While biologists are in agreement as to what happened, there are varying explanations as to how it happened. Some say that the brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis) was introduced to Guam in the logs that were imported from abroad, while others speculate that one of the snakes hid in the belly or wheel well of an airplane. "Human activities often have unexpected results. No one imported the snakes deliberately. They reached Guam because wartime sea and air traffic provided an opportunity for accidental introduction."[4] Regardless of how the brown snake was introduced, “…in the mid 1960's, the brown Treesnake decimated Guam's native avifauna. “The birds of Guam”[5] had “evolved in the absence of snake predators. They had no experience with such a predator and lacked protective behaviors against the brown Treesnake. Consequently, they were easy prey for these efficient, nocturnal predators. As the snakes spread across the island, the number of snakes began to grow exponentially and bird populations declined.”[6]  “They [the birds] showed no fear of the invaders and had no innate defenses against them. The result has been a catastrophe.”[7]

"By 1963, several formerly abundant species of native birds had disappeared from the central part of the island where snakes were most populous. By the late 1960s, birds had begun to decline in the central and southern parts of the island and remained abundant only in isolated patches of forest on the northern end of the island. Snakes began affecting the birds in the north-central and extreme northern parts of the island in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. Most native forest species were virtually extinct when they were listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1984."[8]


Despite an effort in “1983, the only original forest community, which held all ten native woodland species, clung precariously to life in a 160-hectare woodland on the extreme northern tip of the island. Scientists recognized the dangers and began attempts to establish captive breeding populations of the endangered forest birds, but it was too late.”[9]

The balance of nature is exactly that … a delicate balance; the circle of life, the mutual and natural co-existence of everything on this planet. So, what exactly happened? The ecosystem in Guam had existed for hundreds of years with no apparent disruption to its delicate balance. The analogy is more obvious than anything I could have ever hoped for it to be. A serpent, a cold-blooded snake, was accidentally introduced into a fragile ecosystem of a population totally unaware and totally oblivious to the danger! The snake thought it had arrived at the pearly gates. The serpent did not have a natural predator on the island of Guam. The forests were filled with an abundant food supply, and the species could reproduce undeterred and with no outside interference or threat. The snakes flourished … and the birds became extinct.

How is this analogous to us as Americans? Through natural selection are we so oblivious to the predator, the serpent that would destroy us? We are a nation of people; conservatives who: (a) believe in God; (b) believe in the family; (c) believe in hard work; (d) naively trust in people to behave in a good and honest manner, and finally; (e) expect that people will do the right thing. We have never faced such an efficient, deadly, and appearingly nocturnal, predator, getting fat on our money and undeterred in its consumption, growth, and reproduction. We are the birds of Guam. The predator is whatever you would like to call it; Socialism; Fascism, Marxism … and the face of it is barf and this administration. We have nothing to teach us about fear, nothing in our DNA to prepare us for the deadly serpent that would bleed, feed, and, ultimately, destroy us. The survival instinct was not enough to save the birds of Guam. We must own our sense of fear and depend on it for our very survival.

So, in the natural order of life, many of the birds of Guam are extinct. The Germans exhibited the same lack of survival instinct; the DNA to fear the predator, and they also naïvely trusted the serpent and allowed it to get too close. Because the Germans were unaware, they foolishly trusted a cold-blooded predator named Adolf Hitler. It appears as if the progressives have successfully, through natural selection, bred out any sense of morals, conscience, and decency. Through natural selection, have we, as a species and as a people, evolved past this naïveté and blind trust? Do we have survival in our DNA, or are we to go the way of the birds on Guam?

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1 http://www.merriam-webster.com/
2 Id.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
4 http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birds/Facts/FactSheets/fact-guambirds.cfm
5 http://www.fort.usgs.gov/resources/education/bts/impacts/birds.asp
6 Id.
7 http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birds/Facts/FactSheets/fact-guambirds.cfm
8 http://www.fort.usgs.gov/resources/education/bts/impacts/birds.asp
9 Id.