Movie Screening: The Messenger

Event Date: 
Monday, February 13, 2017 - 7:00am

 

UGA, Miller Learning Center, Room 148

In ancient times, humans viewed songbirds as messengers from the gods and looked to the songs of birds to foretell the future. Today, once again, the birds have something to tell us, and the message is not a comfortable one. Birds are delivering an urgent message about Earth’s health — one that we ignore at our peril.

Songbirds are vanishing at an alarming rate. Populations of hundreds of species have dipped dramatically. THE MESSENGER (http://songbirdsos.com/) explores the pressures facing songbird populations and the potential impact of bird declines on the environment. The film follows songbirds on a visually thrilling yet perilous journey through our changing world, bringing us face-to-face with a variety of human-made perils that have devastated thrushes, warblers, orioles, tanagers, grosbeaks and many other airborne music-makers. These threats include climate change, hunting, light pollution, high-rise collisions, pipelines, pesticides and loss of migratory habitats.

Already we may have lost almost half the songbirds that filled the skies fifty years ago. THE MESSENGER asks what it will mean to all of us on both a global and human level if we lose them and engages with an army of scientists, ecologists, and bird enthusiasts mobilizing in the race against time to protect songbirds.

Discussion will be led by Dr. Robert Cooper, Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Ornithology in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Cooper has studied birds for almost 40 years and has published over 100 scholarly articles in scientific journals. He has twice won awards from the bird conservation group Partners in Flight, an international organization that takes a science-based approach to saving at-risk bird species and their habitats. His current research includes studies of ecology and conservation of forest songbirds, beach-nesting shorebirds and secretive marsh birds of the tidal marshes of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.