“America has been 
likened to a concrete 
sea and an ocean of 
crops and freeways.” 
THE AUDUBON TE ULL Eran 
one niche for another is usually followed by a 
change of species composition. A comparison 
between the original and present number of 
species in Illinois demonstrates unquestionably 
that the state has lost many species while gaining 
only a few. Or to put it another way, the state 
has given up a wealth of native species to obtain 
mainly a lot of alien Starlings and English 
Sparrows. 
Illinois, judging from its ornithological index, 
is far from well. Its boundaries contain less than 
1 per cent of the world’s total land area and only 
a tiny fraction of the world’s human population; 
yet its corpus, within about a century, has devel- 
oped a Black List 16 per cent as great as the num- 
ber of bird extinctions which man has wrought 
around the world since the year 1640. 
Our Red List, too, is not unimpressive, sur- 
passing in magnitude the sum of endangered birds 
on the whole continent of Africa. 
For the most part, the Red-Listed Illinois birds 
are inconspicuous denizens of dim haunts—illu- 
sive, small, and plain in plumage. Spotlighting 
their existence with sufficient intensity to illum- 
inate the dangers they face will be difficult—per- 
haps impossible. The public and conservationists 
alike dote on large showy species and on spectacu- 
lar places. The Whooping Crane and Everglades 
Kite consequently may be saved, but the prospect 
of saving the Red-Listed birds and their nesting 
places in Illinois looks unpromising enough to 
cause bitterness and disgust—two moods which 
are a waste of time and not worth discussing. 
In recent years—with a painful accuracy that 
Audubon would have appreciated—America has 
been likened to a wasteland and a trash heap, a 
concrete sea and an ocean of crops and freeways. 
Very disagreeable, highly abusive. Yet the anal- 
ogies suggesting, for example, inhospitable marine 
expanses could prove productive if they nudge us 
closer to recognizing the island-like character of 
Iilinois’ remaining wildlife habitats. 
Most are mere specks, existing at a certain 
longitude and latitude on the world globe and 
as subject to harsh intrusion, much as the oceanic 
dots listed below. Given car dumps and suburbs 
in place of barnacle encrustations and coral colo- 
nies, a parallel may be drawn between, say, Lord 
Howe Island from 1790 to 1928, and some bit of 
leftover meadow or marsh in the _ reader’s 
neighborhood. 
