An opinion piece from The Guardian from back in January, written by Eric Milton, makes the case that they (we?) are. What do you think? Hat tip to Angus, whose Facebook feed I got the link from.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
I guess I understand the sentiment a bit, but the actual carbon footprint of a few dozen hard core birders probably pales in comparison with, well, every other aspect of modern life. Milton would be better served going after urban sprawl and development interests if he really wanted to make an impact.
I think twitchers are an easy target, but in the long run a passion for nature however it expresses itself is more positive than negative.
I expect that fans getting to stadiums for football/soccer/baseball/concerts (pick one) probably have a bigger footprint than a birder does. When you take number of division 1 colleges with multiple sports programs that take their members all over the country it really adds up.
Wonder if anyone has ever bothered to figure that out??
Speaking of baseball, I didn’t realize Eric Milton could write as well as he could pitch.
I think the number of big-time twitchers is fairly small compared to other greenhouse gas contributors. Daily car commuting and sitting in traffic, for example, causes much more pollution than an occasional twitch for a rarity or weekend road trip. Business travel is probably more significant than strictly birding trips when it comes to airline gases. Of course, big-time listers that travel a lot should probably look at reducing their footprint in some way, but I don’t think they are the main problem.
So… real Ecotourism is bad for the planet? I dont think we are destroying the planet, the very definition of ecotourism prevents that loophole in the equation, so folks keep on birding because besides of all the great things it does for conservation it create awareness all by itself
I get a bit fed up with people being criticised for taking flights, when the REAL problems, namely human overpopulation and habitat destruction, hardly rate a mention. So while people carry on having children and keep hacking down and burning the forests and driving other species to extinction, I refuse to be told whether I can travel or not.
So Eric Milton can wind his neck in (as can the likes of the aptly named anti-aviation group Plane Stupid).
The commenters here are right on. This is over-exaggeration to the extreme. A few birders are killing the planet? Even if they weren’t at the same time acting as ecotourists, they still would not be doing a bit of damage.
And, frankly, this is the type of article that turns people off to environmentalism. People who otherwise might be motivated to change their lifestyle or campaign for change hear something like this and get the feeling the inmates are running the asylum. Complaints like this are not really rational, and, as mentioned, pale in comparison to the real environmental threats out there. If people want the environmental movement to be taken seriously by everyday people (and not just “environmentalists”) the movement itself must get more serious and leave these types of specious argument behind.
It’s like when Sheryl Crow says everyone should use one square of toilet paper. Do you think people hear that and say, “That sounds reasonable, I think I’ll jump on board and do my part!” Or do you think the majority of people brush it aside and say, “How ridiculous”? Further, what is the author’s point, here? To take a small segment of the population that is actually environmentally conscience and tell them to stop doing what they love while outdoors? Sounds counterproductive.
I guess I’ll be a little bit contrarian. While I agree with the other commenters that twitching, in and of itself, cannot be considered as “killing the planet” all by its lonesome, I think that the culture of assuming we can drop everything and travel on a whim, which is what the word twitching implies if I understand it correctly, may well be coming to an end with the dwindling of our finite fossil fuels. And ecotourism – well, there’s some very good ecotourism out there, but the industry also does a lot of greenwashing, as well.
On the whole I agree that there is a little irony in doing something environmentally destructive to see a bird, whether it’s harassing owls or driving long distances, although I don’t agree with the provocative title.