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Daily CSR

Daily CSR
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Mexico Builds Urban Gardens To Prevent Hummingbirds Extinction



03/07/2020

Human settlement continues to encroach hummingbirds natural habitat, while the latter happens to be the “most important pollinating bird in the Americas” which plays a big role in the country’s economy.


Dailycsr.com – 07 March 2020 –In Mexico, we get to see over a hundred “urban gardens, while most of them can be found in the capital, Mexico City. These have been created to “attract hummingbirds” for with the gradual sprawling of cities these birds have lost their natural habitats.
 
Mexico has a diversity of fifty eight different species of hummingbirds while almost fifty percent of its thirteen endemic species stand at the verge of extinction as the risk of losing sustainable habitats continues. The shrinking of natural habitats for these birds as human settlement encroach in while climate change only adds to the challenge.
 
Claudia Rodriguez is biologist who is working on the project titled “Urban Garden” which has created hundred and forty nine gardens so far. In Rodriguez’s words:
“When cities grow, we’re removing forests, we’re removing the vegetation that hummingbirds use to feed, to reproduce”.
“If hummingbirds disappear, the diversity of plants decreases and in the long term the ecosystem will end up poorer”.
 
While Rodriguez also noted that humming birds can be counted as the “most important pollinating bird in the Americas”. Through pollination, these birds become a conservatory medium for over “a thousand different plant species, some of which Mexico exports to Canada and as far as Japan”. Given their fast metabolism rate, these tiny birds need to feed constantly, reminds Rodriguez.
 
Maria del Coro Arizmendi is a colleague of Rodriguez who had builta garden back in 2014 inside “National Autonomous University in Mexico City” wherein she planted various favourite plans of the hummingbirds such as “myrtle and lantanas”. According to Reuters reports:
“Rodriguez said more hummingbirds, mostly broad-billed and beryl species, have arrived in the garden in recent years. In the meantime, it has also attracted other pollinators such as bees, butterflies and bumblebees”.
 
References:
reuters.com