Extinction Elect
A prelude to bird bodies
I try my hardest to be optimistic, on this blog and in my life, to focus on what gives me joy and all that is worth fighting for in this world. When I get worked up, I hold my tongue. I censor myself scrupulously. I write and rewrite every little blog post for weeks and weeks, no matter how insignificant its scope, to be sure I really believe what I’m saying, that it holds up to scrutiny, that I’m not getting carried away, that I’m sharing the best information that I can with you.
But the filthy rich men we have just elected don’t do that— they say absolutely anything, the moment it crosses their mind, all in order to stoke the hatred and perpetuate the ignorance that bolsters their power. And it has worked for them, yet again.
So forgive me for casting aside my countless self-imposed filters, for just one day.
Words fail to convey how profoundly it hurts to be a progressive young woman in this country. For a second time, we collectively decided we’d rather have a boundlessly cruel, felonious, predatory, bigoted aspiring fascist leading our country than an exceedingly qualified, intelligent, competent woman. We stood behind a clown man who openly and unambiguously hates women, people of color, queer and trans people, immigrants, disabled people, poor people, and anyone else seeking liberation. Now we’ve given him and his party the power to turn their hatred into policy, with the potential to roll back our hard-won rights, destroy countless lives, and the planet itself.
This is not a fluke anymore — this is who Americans are.
This incomprehensible choice is not “anti-establishment.” It is not “clearing the swamp.” This campaign was funded by THE richest man in the world, who used his exclusive ownership of one of the world’s largest social media platforms to spread the inflammatory propaganda which got Trump elected again. Musk now stands to gain hundreds of billions more from Trump’s economic policies that favor the ultra wealthy. This outcome bolsters the power of those who already have everything, while turning the average Americans’ hate against the most disfavored and disenfranchised among us. It has never been clearer that we live in a world where the richest men get to decide what our lives are like, where allegedly democratic elections can be shamelessly bought.
We can comfort each other with platitudes about pendulums swinging and assure ourselves that life goes on, has to go on, but nothing is capable of dissolving the abject tragedy of this. It is worth dwelling in.
For just one day, let’s not gaslight ourselves into believing this is anything other than an utter catastrophe.
Not everyone who reads this Substack will have voted the way I did, but surely if you’re here, you love nature. If you have the patience and good will to endure my rants about all things avian, surely you reap some enjoyment from watching birds in your own neighborhood, in your backyard, or at your local parks. So let’s focus simply on what happens to the birds we love during another four years of a Trump White House.
Did you know that since 1970 – within some of your lifetimes! – we have lost 30% of our North American breeding bird populations. Three BILLION birds have vanished from our landscape. Trump’s utter disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency will ensure that bird populations continue their free fall, with many reaching terminal velocity.
During his first term, Trump rolled back over 100 EPA regulations on air and water pollution, infrastructure development, and mining and drilling. He has only grown more zealous since then in his love for the polluting fossil fuel industry, whose lobbyists compensate him generously for permitting them to continue planetary annihilation for profit.
Very plainly, this means that birds’ habitats will continue shrinking at an accelerated pace, and our feathered friends will be exposed to more and more lethal chemicals and pesticides. And it is only a brief window of time before these landscapes we render uninhabitable to them become uninhabitable to us.
I am just learning the birds’ songs as the forests are already growing quiet. The “Silent Spring” which pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson warned us about in 1962 is the future which Trump will construct with his mass deregulation of business.
He trashed policies which have been in place since the EPA was created in 1970, which went untouched through the Reagan and Bush years, because even those bastards were not evil enough to say, “Actually, we need more pollution! Let’s have dirtier air and water, please!”
But Trump is not a “normal” republican – he is a cult leader and a cartoon supervillain, who will scorch the Earth gleefully if it means people will keep giving him money, fame, and power. How did we get to this point where the unprecedented destruction of life is not only condoned, but embraced and brazenly encouraged by our highest officials?
And if you think that bird populations have little material effect on the average person’s life, think again.
A 2024 study from the American Economic Review connected the rapid decline of India’s vulture populations in the 1990s with half a million additional human deaths between 2000 and 2005. The vulture populations collapsed because the common painkiller diclofenac, which veterinarians began using on livestock in the 90s, was toxic to them even in trace amounts. With the sudden absence of vultures, livestock carcasses piled up, contaminating waterways and causing an increase in disease-spreading feral dog populations. The researchers found that on average, areas that had become uninhabitable for vultures saw a 4% increase in human deaths compared to areas where vulture populations remained more stable. They estimate the public health crisis that followed the vulture population collapse cost India $70 billion dollars a year.
While I do not think a species’ existence should be evaluated in terms of its economic benefit to humanity, it is remarkable to see this case where we can actually put a price on an extinction event. That price is staggeringly HIGH, both monetarily and in terms of the loss of human life.
We won’t appreciate all that birds do for our lives until they are in catastrophic decline, no longer doing what we have quietly relied upon them to do since time immemorial. At that point, it is already too late. The birds are just a forecast for what is to come for us. They die and we die with them.
Just before sunset on election night, I sat at the edge of Watson Lake, cross-legged, peering through my binoculars at the thousands of waterfowl gathered on the open waters for the coming winter. On the opposite shore, a herd of ten Mule Deer browsed on the leaves of the last green shrubs, and four migrating American White Pelicans dwarfed all the ducks and geese around them like remnants of the Jurassic Period. In the distance, a resident adult Bald Eagle swooped and circled the water, and a nearby Great Blue Heron stood submerged right up to his tail feathers, as stock-still and patient as the cattails.
It’s simply unreal, what one can see in this City of Prescott Park on an ordinary Tuesday night. This is why I live here. This is what I live for, I was thinking while sitting there slack-jawed, as I kept noticing more and more and more life, marvelous life, creatures whose names now come to me like a language I was born knowing but did not speak for too many years.
I had avoided the news all day. I knew what could be coming — I will never take the sane result for granted as we did so naively in 2016 — but I thought it was unlikely. Certainly, I never imagined it would come so swiftly and decisively, the triumph of hate, the rejection of unconditional care for all the human and non-human persons of our world.
When I return to that lake, as I do every few days to be rejuvenated, I want to tell every creature I meet that I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’re making decisions that will determine your future, without paying any mind to your rights to a continued existence. I’m sorry that we don’t love your world, our world, as much as we hate each other. I’m sorry that we are so profoundly ignorant. I’m sorry that all the love I have for you, and that so many good people have, is not enough to keep you safe from harm, to keep their homes free of degradation and destruction. I’m sorry that so many people do not see that what we do to you, we do to ourselves.
We could still remake our world in harmony with, rather than in domination over, the countless precious life forms on our planet. But that’s not the choice this country has made.
Prescott is indeed full of Baby Boomers who seem hell-bent on taking this country’s future to the grave with them. But, crucially, it’s also full of people of all ages and backgrounds that love humanity, love our planet, and are capable of organizing to fight for their rights. Much of the Granite Dells where I find endless wonder and peace in nature has been preserved and restored due to the activism and advocacy of local citizens and the organizations they create.
In this time of despair, I will look to those folks for inspiration and a path forward — even as the country rejects our collective responsibility to our planet, we can do our best to safeguard the precious, singular places that we love, that we draw our life force from, right here in our community. We are the minority, but I have my people, and that love we share, create, and propogate is all that matters in the end.
I’ve accepted a new job I will start in the new year – Education Coordinator at the Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary in Prescott. In this role, I will get to work much more closely with children, whose connection to nature and to wild creatures it is vitally important to nurture, and with the amazing animals who live at this sanctuary. I will get to focus on what I love most – celebrating biodiversity through hands-on, immersive education. I hope to create experiences that will inspire young people to protect our planet and all its creatures, and to keep learning more about our beautiful world every day of their lives. I want to equip people to see the wisdom of all creatures, of all ways of life, and to never turn towards one man who wants to be your savior, who says he has the fixes to all that plagues you, if you will only submit…
And lastly. This post is a prelude, written retrospectively, to a series of posts I hope to share with you in the coming weeks. I’ve been writing about dead birds behind closed doors for some time now, after a series of impactful encounters with the bodies of birds throughout the spring and summer. Now, this topic is taking on another layer of significance, as we brace for another climate-denying, environmentally destructive administration. We have cast our votes for more death, more destruction, and now it is time to contemplate what is on the horizon, for the birds and for us.
Extend grace and give care to yourself and the people around you. Send good vibes to the trees, to the squirrels, to your backyard birds. Tell them you see them, and you love them, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get through this together.
And as always, thank you for keeping an eye on things with me.
Thank you Carly for so clearly expressing the feelings many of us have at this moment. I always look forward to your thoughts and observations - from today, even more!
Carly, you write so very beautifully! I am distraught as well about the outcome of this election. I am very worried about our country! Instead of hopping in a garbage truck or working at McDonalds, I wish our newly elected president would have gone outside in the great outdoors, and enjoyed the beauty of our land, in the hope that he too can see the marvel in nature and want to preserve it. Unfortunately, I do not see that happening. Congratulations on your new job! I think it sounds fabulous! How exciting that you get to share your love of nature with children, so that they may learn to appreciate what God has given us.