Scicomm Article

What is It?

Written by scientists for scientists, research articles in science communication tend to be pretty difficult for the general public to understand. The scicomm article is a narrative literature piece that takes technical research articles and explains them in a simpler way, and are pieces that can be enjoyed by a wider audience.

To read my article, simply click the link on the left.

Advocacy Project

Designed to be a multimedia essay, the advocacy project has been one of the big focuses of this course in the last few weeks. After doing a social media campaign on crows, I have studied a lot of the current problems this species is facing. But in addition to looking for problems, searching for solutions has also been a major objective. The results of these findings can be found below as an online multimedia article.

Crows in Zoos

It’s a mild, sunny afternoon in winter. The sound of nature is at work: the stomping of African elephants, the growl of a Siberian tiger, and the sound of an awed crowd watching these great beasts at the Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria. And to complement this scenery is a crow, hard at work. With winter set into motion, the crow has a few things on its to-do list. This list includes preparation for winter roosts, a chance to flock with others of its kind and share warmth and collect food. As temperatures drop, the crow is looking for more consistent temperatures and reliable food. And what better place to find these consistencies than at a local city zoo?

Researchers Laszlo Kover and Szabolcs Lengyel, researchers from Debrecen, Hungary conducted research in 2014 and 2015 to find the connection between crows and their attraction to zoos and the role they play in urban environments. The crow will often find itself in urban environments, due to the benefits of high food availability year-round, as well as low predator pressure.

Kover and Lengyel hypothesized that one, the number of crows would vary due to geographical differences in zoos and their respective cities. And two, there would be more crows in the winter in these locations because crows would have more difficulty finding food in the wild than they would in the summer, when food is easier to forage. Finally, they predicted that there would be more crows in the afternoon because of feeding times being held at zoos during the day. Another benefit corvids have gained from living amongst humans is our abundance of food, which gives them quick and easy access to meals. Keeping track of how the crows would behave in relation to how they acquired their food (whether found in the wild or from humans) played an important role in Kover and Lengyel’s research.

As it turns out, crows will flock to zoos for any number of reasons, including the current calendar season, time of day, weather, or the number of visitors that are frequenting the zoo. For a majority of the zoos studied, the higher number of winter crow visitors than summer could be explained by the food availability during feeding times at zoos rather than “in natural environments, where food is scarce and/or under snow…”. Crows’ year-round presence in zoos presents their year-round benefits from spending time there. This observation highlights the important role of zoos as being more than breeding grounds for corvids, who are busy building their homes in the summer. Kover and Lengyel’s team concluded that “The crows observed in the zoo in the summer are, almost exclusively, resident breeding birds…” Zoos offer great potential nesting sites in its tall trees or other maintained environments, and the study’s results at the zoo in Debrecen showed a high increase in nesting density.

In line with our researcher’s predictions, most zoos experienced more crow sightings during the afternoon, rather than morning. They noted that most natural foraging happened in open areas and hardly in forests or woody areas, while for anthropogenic food sources, feeding occurred near the sources themselves. This included outdoor eateries, trash cans or kiosks. The researchers concluded most of these differences were due to the individual zoo structure and the format of their habitats. In Kristan III and Boarman’s study, they concluded that there is a correlation with the success of the Common Raven even in inhospitable environments, to survive, because of anthropogenic resources that are nearby. And the American crows in John Withey and John Marzluff’s study showed that crows were aware of the amount of food when living closer to humans. It was found that there was much more crow activity when in areas where there was more man made material available. Whether the food is natural or anthropogenic in nature, crows conveniently look to zoos to find both food sources.

As the sun sets, a crow flying overhead might start to experience hunger, and is looking for a good place to build a nest. It is a true wonder that the crow might choose a zoo as its landing spot. The zoo, being a spectacle of nature found in the urban world, offers to the crow the very food and nesting availability that the crow itself is unable to find in the wild. It should raise some questions however, how that has become the case. The case that the very nature we bring together and have people pay to see, is no longer one that exists for many of the animals it was built for.

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A Pesticide Problem

Crows are often the recipient of many people’s hate. In many cultures (such as the Hindu religion or Welsh mythology) they are seen as evil and are tied to negative portrayals for several reasons. They are often perceived as being an omen of death, and their reputation for collecting shiny objects and eating people’s crops only make matters worse. They are also well-known for their loud cawing and many find themselves troubled by the sounds of a communal crow roost. However, while humans face these issues with crows, crows have their own problems as well—and many of these problems are because of humans. Like most other species in our diverse ecosystem, crows are another animal that is affected by climate change. It isn’t just the sea turtles, or the polar bear, or the pandas that are affected. Climate change causes harm to all parts of the world—even to the noisy, cawing crow. In the particular case of the crow, which is susceptible to the West Nile Virus, warmer temperatures bring with it more mosquitoes, which allows the virus to spread easier.

A study done in Canada revealed that global warming in the near future would worsen conditions for the amount of cases of the West Nile Virus for American crows in Canada. “Statistical results revealed that temperature and precipitation were significantly related to positive cases of West Nile Virus in American crows…Spatial analyses revealed that increased warming in the near future may increase the latitudinal extension of West Nile Virus in American crows in Canada.” And while crow roosts are often seen as loud and disruptive, most crow populations will persist and grow because of the food waste that is available from nearby humans. Due to their pest reputation, there are many crow cullings in Europe, where millions of corvids are killed annually. But these local initiatives often prove to be inefficient and even counterintuitive, being unable to stop the widespread growth of the crow. Our food is one of the biggest reasons crows are so highly populated in urban areas. While they are able to find more artificial nest materials and exploit the amount of impervious structures there are, it is our food—from our produce to our trash—that gives crows an abundance of supply to eat from. If we reduce our food waste, there will be fewer crows lurking about. However, it isn’t the spread of diseases, or the warming climate, or our food waste that we should be the most worried about—it’s a pesticide problem.

Pesticides are the biggest cause of bird death in the U.S. and Europe. According to the Chicago Bird Alliance, insecticides are found in 70% of dead birds. Moreover, their website states that “there’s almost 30% fewer birds now than there were since the 1970s.” And in case you’re confused as to what that really means: it means that we are doing a really bad job of taking care of our environment. And our information on a lot of these chemicals is very premature. It wasn’t until 2010 that there was testing on human ingestion of pesticides to test for the toxicity level. And not until almost 2017 that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implemented a framework for incorporating human-tested data into their studies. Meaning, much of the information we had up until that point was done on animal testing, another big issue for our wildlife population. Neonicotinoids are one example of a common pesticide used around the world. The American Bird Conservancy, a non-profit organization that aims to conserve bird wildlife and bird habitats, founded in 1994, describes the chemical as “so deadly to birds that a single neonic-coated seed can kill a songbird.” There are also particular cases of people poisoning crows directly with these chemicals, but the general use of pesticides has both direct and indirect negative effects. Birds will ingest these chemicals on plants or on the insects, and consuming these toxins, even in small amounts, can cause death. It also changes the amount of natural food sources available—smaller insect populations negatively impacts birds’ survival—especially those on migratory routes.

Within the last 10 years there have been two reported instances of crows being poisoned in Portland, Oregon for their reputation as pests. It is a needlessly cruel death for these birds and a violation of pre-existing laws as well. There were accounts that both the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act come into play here. The former law, which was passed in 1918 bans the taking of migratory birds without approval from the Secretary of the Interior via permit use. The latter is a law that is responsible for the distribution, use, and sale of pesticides and was passed in the United States in 1947. This incident landed itself on the news and included accounts from witnesses testifying to seeing birds falling out of the sky. Perhaps the cawing of crows may be loud, aggressive, or just plain annoying. Crows are often responsible for the damage of crops, but isn’t poisoning these birds and ending their lives a step too far? If humans are superior to other species, so much to the point where we hold the position of being worthy of harming the other creatures in our ecosystem, should we also not be equally responsible for making sure the populations of others do not die out? And one might argue that these poisonings are not comparable to the accidental-eventual deaths of crows who die from someone spraying their yard with RoundUp. But the results of the poisonings showed how painful the deaths for these crows can be to experience. Knowing this and choosing to move forward with the decision to use pesticides should cause at least a bit of concern, no matter one’s stance on crows.

Pesticides can cause crows to directly ingest toxins, or indirectly harm crows by changing the natural food chain and what is available to eat. Funnily enough, keeping these birds around allows them to eat the insects themselves and be a natural “bug killer” in one’s yard.

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What Can Be Done?

And the fact that the existence of these birds can be helpful also adds another layer to this problem. The problem of crows and pesticides isn’t as simple as one easy fix.

For starters, because there isn’t very much data on pesticide testing, we need a lot more industrial participation. In order to push people away from hazardous chemicals in current repellents, there needs to be a market to sell them to. In a 1992 publication, it was found that there were few registered chemicals under the EPA, and numbers for a quantifiable market didn’t exist. “This lack of success in transferring bird repellent technologies to the private sector reflects the small demonstrable economic impact of many agricultural bird damage problems. And an inability to accurately gauge whether a specific repellent is marketable.” First steps would include funding for new chemicals and product development as well as enough quantifiable interest in receiving these products. In order for any of this to happen, a systemic change must be implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The organization American Bird Conservancy (aka ABC Birds) is trying to begin change by petitioning the EPA to create regulations requiring proof that registered chemicals in insecticides will be successful when they are approved. “Currently, there is technically no requirement to submit data showing that a neonic works as intended when it is being registered.” And one of the biggest legislative changes ABC Birds is trying to pass is a petition under the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act which exposes legislative loopholes that currently allow the usage of harmful pesticides. It was announced to the Senate on February 2nd, 2023 by the U.S. Senator Cory Booker and endorsed by numerous organizations including ABC Birds and Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research—among others. This is one global solution that could make a huge difference in the issue of pesticides on crows and other birds of the like. According to biologicaldiversity.org, the act “includes a ban on the highly toxic pesticide paraquat, which is known to cause Parkinson’s disease, as well as dangerous organophosphates and neonicotinoids.” The health of farmworkers and agricultural communities are at the forefront of this legislations’ concern for exposure to harmful pesticides. Many of the products to be banned in this act are already banned in other countries in the European Union and Canada.

Since this act is focused on closing loopholes, it is essential that this act goes into effect before other ones are added and become rendered useless by foundational rifts in these laws. While there is research to be done on creating eco-friendly products that deter pests, it is difficult to place a date on time for when this research will become fruitful. The Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act can be supported locally by signing a petition found on ABC Birds’ website and a great way to spread awareness in local communities, especially amongst gardening and agricultural circles. The petition can be shared online via social media sites as well. Many animal researchers use social media to learn and spread awareness about different causes. And for those not familiar with animal research, social media gives access to all of these resources to anyone on the platform, so more people can join a cause they wouldn’t have heard about otherwise. It is one solution that can make a big impact on the ending of pesticide usage, especially in the U.S. Even though it wouldn’t ban all pesticides, it would create a place to start a change in pesticide usage.

And while social media can be great to spread awareness, bringing out these changes in practice is another thing entirely. Telling people that pesticides are bad and should not be used won’t guarantee that everyone who sees and likes posts raising awareness will be the target demographic that buys and uses these products to begin with. This creates even bigger leeway in accomplishing a meaningful goal to reach. But if everyone plays a part in recognizing pesticides as a major problem, if the act gets passed, these products won't be available on the shelves for everyone else.

But what about those of you who are thinking: But I wouldn’t have to use pesticides if there weren’t any pests to begin with? Well, the thing is, humans must adopt a more tolerant attitude to crows and other birds if pests are the issue. These birds can be natural pest killers and will eat the pests mucking up your agriculture. And there may be others of you thinking: But what about the crows who are eating crops? What if the crows are the problem? Well, one of the biggest reasons crow populations thrive in urban areas is because of human food waste. Humans are very wasteful with food—the USDA website states that there was about 133 billion pounds of food loss in 2010. If people managed their food waste better, there would be fewer reasons for crows to hang around urban areas. But because these are bigger goals with a broader range of effect and less direction, pushing instead for the Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides Act would give a more realistic solution to a feasible problem for the time being.

The crow, who is almost certainly nearby, whether that be in the city or the city's backyard, isn't super appreciated. You might consider it a thief or even a pest, but it is still one of nature's many creatures that has in its own way, learned to adapt to humans. While their lifespan isn't immensely long, it would be nicer to see these creatures live out to their full potential in the wild where they could roam freely, rather than pilfering through people's garbage cans. To consider helping these creatures, even if just to see less of them, reducing food waste and cutting out pesticide usage would be a great place to start.

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Works Cited

“A Year of Helping Birds: Avoid Harmful Pesticides.” Chicago Bird Alliance, 20 May 2023, chicagobirdalliance.org/blog/2023/5/20/year-of-helping-birds-avoid-pesticides.

Benmazouz, Isma et al. “Corvids in Urban Environments: A Systematic Global Literature Review.” Animals : an open access journal from MDPI vol. 11,11 3226. 11 Nov. 2021, doi:10.3390/ani11113226

““Falling from the Sky”: Dead Crows in Portland Were Poisoned.” Kgw.com, 7 Mar. 2018, www.kgw.com/article/news/local/animal/dead-crows-found-in-portland-poisoning-suspected/283-513389485#:~:text=The%20Audubon%20Society%20of%20Portland. Accessed 8 June 2024.

https://www.facebook.com/learn.religions. “The Magic behind Crow & Raven Mythology, Legends, and Folklore.” Learn Religions, 2019, www.learnreligions.com/the-magic-of-crows-and-ravens-2562511.

Hu, Xindi. “The Most Widely Used Pesticide, One Year Later.” Science in the News, 17 Apr. 2018, sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/widely-used-pesticide-one-year-later/.

Jiguet, Frédéric. “The Fox and the Crow. A Need to Update Pest Control Strategies.” Biological Conservation, vol. 248, Aug. 2020, p. 108693, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108693.

Kövér L, Lengyel S, Takenaka M, et al. “Why do zoos attract crows? A comparative study from Europe and Asia.” Ecol Evol. 2019;9:14465–14475. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.5881

Kristan W. B., III , and W. I. Boarman (2007). Effects of anthropogenic developments on Common Raven nesting biology in the west Mojave Desert. Ecological Applications 17:1703–1713. https://doi.org/10.1890/06-1114.1

LaDeau, Shannon L., et al. “West Nile Virus Impacts in American Crow Populations Are Associated with Human Land Use and Climate.” Ecological Research, vol. 26, no. 5, 26 May 2010, pp. 909–916, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-010-0725-z. Accessed 7 Nov. 2021.

Mason, J. Russell, and Larry Clark. “Nonlethal Repellents: The Development of Cost-Effective, Practical Solutions to Agricultural and Industrial Problems.” Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference, vol. 15, no. 15, 1992, escholarship.org/uc/item/9sg6t1cc. Accessed 8 June 2024.

“Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.” Www.fws.gov, www.fws.gov/law/migratory-bird-treaty-act-1918#:~:text=The%20Migratory%20Bird%20Treaty%20Act%20(MBTA)%20prohibits%20the%20take%20(.

Oregonian/OregonLive, Kale Williams | The. “Crow Deaths in Northeast Portland Confirmed as Poisoning.” Oregonlive, 7 Mar. 2018, www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/03/crow_deaths_in_northeast_portl.html. Accessed 8 June 2024.

“Research Project: Crows at the Zoo – Vienna Zoo.” Www.zoovienna.at, www.zoovienna.at/en/natur-und-artenschutz/research-project-crows-zoo/. Accessed 8 June 2024.

Rutter, Jordan. “Playing the Long Game to Reduce Pesticide Threats.” American Bird Conservancy, 4 Apr. 2024, abcbirds.org/long-game-to-reduce-pesticides/#:~:text=ABC%20and%20our%20partners%20at. Accessed 8 June 2024.

“Senate to Consider Legislation to Protect America’s Children from Toxic Pesticides.” Center for Biological Diversity, biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/senate-to-consider-legislation-to-protect-americas-children-from-toxic-pesticides-2023-02-02/#:~:text=The%20Protect%20America. Accessed 8 June 2024.

“Stand up against Bird-Killing Pesticides.” American Bird Conservancy, act.abcbirds.org/a/take-action-pesticides-pactpa?ms=web_takeaction&_gl=1. Accessed 8 June 2024.

Tam, Benita Y., and Leonard J. S. Tsuji. “West Nile Virus in American Crows (Corvus Brachyrhynchos) in Canada: Projecting the Influence of Climate Change.” GeoJournal, vol. 81, no. 1, 31 Oct. 2014, pp. 89–101, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-014-9609-z. Accessed 9 Oct. 2019.

“The Downtown Portland Crow Roost.” Bird Alliance of Oregon, birdallianceoregon.org/our-work/rehabilitate-wildlife/having-a-wildlife-problem/urban-crows/downtown-crows/#:~:text=Scientists%20believe%20that%20crows%20form. Accessed 8 June 2024.

US EPA, OECA. “Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and Federal Facilities.” US EPA, 10 Sept. 2013, www.epa.gov/enforcement/federal-insecticide-fungicide-and-rodenticide-act-fifra-and-federal-facilities#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Insecticide%2C%20Fungicide%2C%20and.

USDA. “Food Waste FAQs.” Usda.gov, USDA, 2023, www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs.

Withey, J.C., Marzluff, J.M. Multi-scale use of lands providing anthropogenic resources by American Crows in an urbanizing landscape. Landscape Ecol 24, 281–293 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-008-9305-9

World Migratory Bird Day – Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife. crowclinic.org/about-crow/in-the-news/general/world-migratory-bird-day/. Accessed 8 June 2024.