It started on New Year’s Eve.
At around 11:30 pm, residents of the small town of Beebee, Arkansas, watched in horror as 3,000 dead blackbirds rained down on roofs, cars, and roads in a one-mile stretch.
Two days later, some 125 miles away, an estimated 100,000 drum fish were found dead along a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River. Authorities blame the deaths on disease.
In Canada, at around the same time, tens of thousands of birds died in a mega icestorm in Manitoba.
In New Jersey, hundreds of dead birds were also found in Franklin Township. A woman said she found one at her front door and saw dead birds all around her house, “as far as the eyes could see.” Authorities said the USDA had put poison in bird seed to control the European starling population.
Dead birds were also found in Brooklyn and Queens, New York.
In Louisiana, some 450 red-winged blackbirds, brown-headed cowbirds, grackles and starlings were found strewn along a highway in Baton Rouge, after apparently hitting overhead power lines.
In Florida, thousands of fish were discovered rotting and floating in Spruce Creek. Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the two recent cold snaps are to blame for the fish kill.
In Texas, 200 American Coots were found dead on a highway bridge crossing Lake O’ the Pines in Big Cypress Creek. They are believed to have been hit by passing vehicles while walking or apparently trying to roost on the bridge.
In Maryland, 2 million dead fish were found to have washed up on shores in Chesapeake Bay. Authorities say it’s stress caused by unusually cold water and overbreeding among spot fish. A statement by the Maryland Department of the Environment said: “Cold water stress exacerbated by a large population of the affected species (juvenile spot fish) appears to be the cause of the kill. An increased juvenile population and limited deep water habitat would likely compound the effects of cold water stress.”
Dead fish in Chesapeake Bay
In the UK, the recent cold snap was blamed for the deaths of 40,000 Velvet swimming “devil crabs” found littering beaches in Thanet, Kent.
In Sweden, 50 jackdaws were found dead on a street of Falkoping. Swedish experts blamed the shock of New Year fireworks for the unexplained deaths. Many of the birds are believed to have died from stress or as a result of being run over while disoriented.
In New Zealand, hundreds of snapper fish were found dead.
In Brazil, masses of dead fish were found in Paranaguá, Antonina and Guaraqueçaba Pontal do Paraná, leaving thousands of Brazilian fishermen struggling to make ends meet after the sale of seafood was temporarily suspended.
Last Sunday, January 2, in Texas, groups of dead grackles were found scattered in a parking lot and a nearby street in Plainview. Wildlife officials said the bird deaths during the weekend were likely caused by strong winds.
In South Carolina, last Wednesday, January 5, thousands of dead Menhaden fish washed up on Folly Beach. Mark Williams with the Department of Health and Environmental Control says this appears to be a temperature-related fish kill as fish can die when the water gets too cold. Charleston County Park officials said the water temperature was about 48-51 degrees. Williams says the fact that no other species of fish or other sea animal were impacted appears to rule out other causes.
In Tennessee, hundreds of dead birds were found this week in Nashville and nearby counties. The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency says they had deteriorated so badly that a lab could not determine the cause of death.
Yesterday, the Daily Mail reports that thousands of dead turtle doves rained down on roofs and cars in the Italian town of Faenza. A witness told http://www.examiner.com: “all of a sudden the doves just started falling one-by-one then in groups of 10s and 20s.” Residents described the birds falling to the ground like ‘little Christmas balls’ with strange blue stains on their beaks. Initial tests on up to 8,000 of the doves indicated that the blue stain could have been caused by poisoning or hypoxia. Hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, is known to cause confusion and illness in animals. It is also a common precursor to altitude sickness. Experts said results from tests on the doves will not be available for at least a week. They said that cold weather could have caused the birds’ deaths as the flock was swept into a high-altitude wind storm before falling to the earth.
Experts in local-federal government have speculated that New Year fireworks, thunderstorms, cold weather, parasites and even poisoning may be behind the deaths. Tests are being carried out on the dead birds and fish, but results are not expected for several weeks.
On the net, speculations run rife.
Some say it’s the New Madrid Fault — a major seismic zone and a prolific source of intraplate earthquakes (earthquakes within a tectonic plate) in the southern and midwestern United States, stretching to the southwest from New Madrid, Missouri. The New Madrid fault system was responsible for the 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes and may have the potential to produce large earthquakes in the future.
But the New Madrid Fault cannot account for animal die-offs outside of the United States.
More ominously still, some think it’s the Magnetic North Pole that scientists say is shifting toward Russia at an average of around 25 miles a year. Inbuilt navigation systems in birds and fish is believed to be affected by magnetism. With birds and fish relying on it to travel to breeding grounds and warmed climes, there are fears that the shifting pole could be confusing the animals which means they do not migrate in time to avoid cold weather. Writing for Times Square Chronicle on Jan 7, Brett Lipton explains:
Over the past century The Magnetic North Pole has been shifting toward Russia at a steady pace, in fact, at an average of 25 miles per year, an alarming rate considering how many systems are dependent on its location. Compass needles in Africa, for instance, are drifting about 1 degree per decade. And globally the magnetic field has weakened 10% since the 19th century. Another factor to consider is that the Earth’s Magnetic Poles Flip Regularly. In the past 330,000,000 years the poles have juxtaposed 400 times, or on an average of once every 825,000 years, the last such time was approximately 780,000+/- years ago, making us statistically within one standard deviation of an upcoming Magnetic Pole Reversal. Considering that these reversals take appromiately 1,000 years to complete and the massive move and reduction in strength, we may be within a handful of generations away for such a Magnetic North Pole Reversal.
Still others say secret U.S. government experiments are behind the die-offs. Then there are those claiming all this is a sign of a looming Armageddon at the end of the Mayan calendar next year.
For the 10 leading theories on the global animal die-offs, CLICK HERE.
Whatever the explanation, it will have to satisfy this one criterion: The explanation must be sufficiently expansive as to account for animal die-offs not just in the New Madrid seismic zone, not just in the United States, not just in North America, not just in the American continents, but across the Atlantic in Europe and across the Pacific in New Zealand. Thinking off the top of my head, explanations that could meet this criterion are:
- A global seismic line/ring;
- Some global weather phenomenon(na), whether natural or the result of human experimentation;
- Shift in the Magnetic North Pole; and
- The End Times of biblical propecy. YIKES!
For a Google map of animal deaths across the world, CLICK HERE.