Across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, more dead crows were found last week in Chester and Montgomery Counties around Philadelphia and have been sent for West Nile Virus testing. Results will take three weeks. This week at a meeting in Malaysia, BirdLife International reported that one in eight of the world's bird species faces extinction in the coming decades because of human assault on the global environment. Countries with the most birds at risk are Brazil, Indonesia, China, Colombia, Peru, India and the Philippines. BirdLife said most birds are threatened by deforestation, burning of vegetation, commercial logging, subsistence farming, plantations, arable farming and mining.
Most threatened species live in forests.
In the oceans, marine life are having a bad time, too. In the past year alone from the seas around New Zealand, twenty-three giant squid have been trawled up dead and no one knows why. All twenty-three were caught in commercial fishing nets at about 1200 feet depths. Giant squid grow up to nearly fifty feet long, have a beak like a parrot and can have huge, 12-inch diameter eyes. Scientists think they live about a mile below the surface of oceans, but no one has ever studied a living giant squid - making them one of the most illusive creatures on earth.