Coal Companies

Are driving the Cerulean warbler, a tiny (5") tree-top dweller in the Appalachian mountains (and nowhere else) extinct.

They are doing it by the expedient of destroying the little bird's habitat, wholesale, by removing the tops of whole mountains bearing the forests and woodlands which this azure avian's habitat.

The bird is not particularly unique, except that evolution bestowed upon it, and all of life, a singular niche.

Which the civilized appetites for "cheap" energy regard as expendable if it prevents 'people' from experiencing any slight diminishment in the voracious consumption of the planet. There is NO INCENTIVE for "energy-producing corporations" to REDUCE their outputs. Indeed, to do so could lead to charges of market manipulation, as long as no other alternatives were practical.

However, and notwithstanding the profit imperative, for the price of six months of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Dept. of Energy could easily afford to install some form of efficient solar collector/reflector on the roof of every building in America, and reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, the mining of which is used as an 'excuse' to exterminate and eradicate those beautiful co-earth-bound creatures which are no less entitled to their hard-won existence than are we.

An author/environmentalist named Julie Zickefuus examines the fate of the Cerulean warbler, the extraction processes for coal, and the implications of its apparently inevitable demise with the latter processes on our condition as humans in a wonderful piece on BirdWatchers' Digest dot com.

The Photo: A male cerulean warbler, a treetop songbird of the Appalachian mountain forests. This image was taken in Berkeley County, WV just after this male returned from spring migration. He was nesting in the Sleepy Creek Wildlife Management area.