7 Most Craziest Construction Projects Ever Proposed

7Vertical Farming

Photo credit: Vincent Callebaut

If there’s any complaint to be made about farming, it’s that you can’t do it hundreds of feet in the air, and vertical farming is out to solve that problem. Vertical farming grows crops in skyscrapers, and the concepts look pretty artsy, like a digital age version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Vertical farming would solve a lot of issues if it were at all feasible. It’s estimated that 80 percent of people will live in urban areas by 2050 (as opposed to the current 60 percent). Some project that this kind of distribution, coupled with the added strain of a growing world population, could lead to shortages of food and farmable land. Vertical farming literally creates farmland on floor after floor. Couple that with the land being indoors in a controllable climate, and you could also farm all year round.

Propositions for vertical farms include the Dragonfly, a dragonfly wing–shaped prototype smack dab in the middle of New York City. The main problem with the idea is that technology hasn’t quite caught up with our aspirations yet.

6Plan Voisin

Photo credit: Oklahoma State University

The Road Tower wasn’t the most extreme plan proposed for Paris. This city is quite possibly the most romantic and beautiful place on the planet, but back in the 1920s, architect Le Corbusier wanted to knock it to the ground and rebuild it in a decidedly different fashion, which he called Plan Voisin.

Historic Paris would be leveled, and in its place, Le Corbusier would build 18 enormous glass towers. These towers, connected by subway stations and surrounded by a sprawling garden city, would house Paris’s entire business district.

At the time, dismantling Paris made some sense because a lot of it was filthy and in disrepair, but it’s hard today to imagine a world where the Paris we know doesn’t exist.

5The World

Dubai has no shortage of wild construction projects, but this particularly crazy one actually got off the ground—before failing miserably.

The idea behind the World was to create a set of islands off Dubai’s coast in the shape of the continents. Then these islands would be sold off and lived on. They wound up building the islands, though not all the necessary associated structures. Then the global economy tanked.

Today, only one of the islands is inhabited—a part of “Greenland,” owned by Dubai’s ruler. And despite the company’s claims to the contrary, the project has stalled out for so long that the other islands are starting to erode back into the sea. The World is crumbling, and if its designers don’t get the funds together to finish the project, it will eventually wash away entirely—even though 70 percent of the islands have already been sold, some to celebrities like David Beckham.

4Project Chariot

Sometimes, the end result of a construction project isn’t a crazy building or a weird concept. The truly bizarre part of the project is sometimes the means of construction. Enter Project Chariot, otherwise known as “Operation Nuke a Harbor Into the Side of Alaska.”

Shortly after dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US was determined to prove to the world that atomic weaponry could be used for peaceful, productive purposes. Edward Teller (creator of the hydrogen bomb) got the bright idea to use a handful of nukes as a makeshift shovel to widen the Panama Canal and to dig a harbor in Alaska.

A village named Point Hope stood 50 kilometers (30 mi) from the site of the harbor. And remember, this was the ’60s; we knew what radiation poisoning was. But that didn’t stop the government from outright lying to the citizens in Point Hope and telling them there was no possible danger whatsoever.

The project was ultimately shelved because the residents of Point Hope wouldn’t stop protesting. Plus, it was just easier to blow stuff up in the middle of the Nevada desert, where we already had a test site.

3Sutyagin House

Not all insane construction ideas are on a grand scale. In 1992, Nikolai Sutyagin wasn’t satisfied with his home in Arkhangelsk, Russia, so he decided to add on to it. And add on. And on—until it became the world’s tallest wooden house, at 13 stories and 44 meters (144 ft).

At first, he added on three floors, but he didn’t like the appearance. Then he added more, and it still didn’t look right. Sutyagin was never really satisfied until he went to prison, and when he came back, he no longer had the funds to support the construction, so the house slowly rotted and broke down around him.

The city council of Arkhangelsk deemed it a fire hazard and wanted him to tear it down, but Sutyagin added a metal slab on the former roof of his home and claimed that everything above that was just decorative, not part of the actual structure. The city wasn’t buying it, and they forced Sutyagin to dismantle his wooden palace. Now all that remains is the original home and pictures of the castle-like structure that it once was.

2The Manhattan Dome

The ’60s were an era of great interest in science fiction, and domed cities repeatedly showed up in these stories. So it should come as little surprise that, during this time, architect Buckminster Fuller proposed doming in a real city: New York City, to be specific.

The dome would cover most of Manhattan and filter pollution out of the air. None of the buildings inside the dome would need to be heated in the winter or cooled in the summer. Instead, the dome itself would be kept at a constant temperature.

Fuller claimed that once he figured out how to actually make the thing, the city would save enough money in heating, cooling, and snow removal to easily pay for the dome’s cost. However, no one really went for the idea. The cost would’ve been enormous, and no one knew if it would really work, so domed cities were forever banished to the realm of science fiction, much to Fuller’s chagrin.

1Freedom Ship

Freedom Ship was originally proposed back in the ’90s as a gigantic, self-sufficient floating city capable of traversing the world. The ship would have its own economy, complete with shops, schools, jobs, and everything else enjoyed by regular, land-bound society.

The 1,371-meter (4,500 ft), 25-story ship would circumnavigate the Earth once every two years, stopping at all major ports along the way. It would be so mind-bogglingly enormous, however, that it wouldn’t actually fit in the ports. Instead, residents would have to fly into the cities—from the airport on the ship’s top deck.

So why didn’t it work out? Well, aside from the massive undertaking of actually building the thing, they had to convince 50,000 people to live on it. No one at the time seemed willing to totally uproot their lives and live on what could very well be the next Titanic. As much of a romantic idea asFreedom Ship was, buyers just weren’t ready to be a part of it in a world of terrorism, conflict, and people fighting even when they weren’t crammed together like sardines.

Even if interest materializes now, the company would have to drum up $9–10 billion to get the project off the ground.

7 most Infamous And Terrifying Houses Of Murder

7Gertrude Baniszwewski’s House
3850 East New York Street, Indianapolis, Indiana

Via Examiner

Any social worker can attest that child abuse is disgustingly common throughout society, but the fate of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens continues to inspire shock nearly 50 years after her death. Sylvia was the daughter of itinerant carnival workers, sandwiched between sets of older and younger twins. Sylvia and her siblings were often left with relatives or boarded to allow their parents to travel.

In 1965, Sylvia’s parents separated, and her mother, Betty, was jailed for shoplifting shortly thereafter. Sylvia’s father, Lester, sent Sylvia and her sister, Jenny, to live with the mother of one of their friends, Paula Baniszwewski, promising to pay $20 a week for their care. Lester’s first payment was late, and the mother, Gertrude, swiftly turned on the girls. While Jenny saw her share of misery, Gertrude was particularly hard on Sylvia. Skeletal and asthmatic, Gertrude lacked the strength to torture Sylvia as savagely as she wanted to, so she recruited both her own children and those around the neighborhood to subject her to horrible abuses over a period of months. One boy, Coy Hubbard, used her body to practice judo. The girl was beaten so severely that she became incontinent, to which Gertrude reacted by forcing the girl to eat her own feces.

Jenny Likens attempted to get help for Sylvia by contacting their older sister, Diana. Eventually, a social worker was summoned to the house, but Gertrude managed to convince the worker that Sylvia had run away. Things came to anugly head in October 1965, when Gertrude and a neighbor boy named Ricky Hobbs took turns beating Sylvia and carving the words “I am a prostitute and proud of it” into the flesh of her abdomen. Afterward, fearing what would happen if her crimes were discovered, Gertrude forced Sylvia to write a runaway letter to her parents. When Sylvia attempted to escape, she was thrown into the basement, where she was beaten to unconsciousness with a broomstick.

Two days later, she was given a bath by Hobbs and Gertrude’s daughter, Stephanie. When she was removed from the water and placed on a bed, they realized she had stopped breathing. When police were summoned to the house, they encountered a corpse that had seen unimaginable torment. Her body was riddled with bruises and burns, and in her final moments, she’d nearly severed her lips with her teeth. Gertrude was sentenced to life in prison, while the children received lesser sentences.

Bizarrely enough, Gertrude was a model prisoner, and despite protests from Jenny Likens and countless others, she was released from prison after serving just 14 years. She died of lung cancer in 1990. Her daughter, Paula, briefly made headlines in 2012, when she was found working as a teacher’s aide in Iowa under an assumed name. When her identity was revealed, she was fired.

Gertrude’s house stood for over 40 years, inspiring neighborhood rumors that it was haunted. It was demolished in April 2009, and the property nowserves as a parking lot for a church across the street.

6Ed Gein’s House
Corner Of Archer And Second Avenues, Plainfield, Wisconsin

Any horror fan will recognize the name Ed Gein, who inspired a litany of fictional killers, including fictional ones like Norman Bates and Leatherface. Like many demented folks, Gein had a strange childhood, with an alcoholic father and a religious zealot mother. Ed and his brother, Henry, were kept quite socially isolated, and Ed became hopelessly devoted to his mother. His father died in 1940, and Henry began dating a divorced local woman the following year. He was found dead under mysterious circumstances soon after, likely Ed’s first victim. Ed’s mother then suffered a stroke, and he was forced to wait on her hand and foot, deepening the psychosis of their relationship. She died in 1945, freeing Ed to practice his grim obsessions.

He began reading the obituaries so he could raid graveyards for the freshest bodies, acquiring a collection of female human remains that he turned into various items of clothing, including masks, leggings, a corset, and a belt made of human nipples. In 1954, he killed tavern keeper Mary Hogan. He got away with it for a few years, but when local hardware store owner Bernice Worden went missing, he was quickly linked to her as the store’s last customer. A police investigation of Gein’s property revealed a slaughterhouse. Bernice, who was the mother of a Plainfield deputy, dangled from the ceiling, having been skinned like a deer. Ed had partitioned off the sections of the house his mother used, leaving them as a pristine shrine. His crammed portion of the house was strewn with filth and stinking graveyard relics.

Ed was convicted of first-degree murder, but having been found insane, he spent the rest of his years in a mental hospital. The house itself was to be put up for auction on March 30, 1958, and rumors swirled that it would be used as a tourist destination. Three days before the auction, the house burned to the ground, likely the result of arson. Today, it is a wooded area, the trees plastered with “No Trespassing” signs.

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5Gary Heidnik’s House
3520 North Marshall Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Photo credit: Fox News

Our image of serial killers is often informed by genius, ultra-cunning figures like Hannibal Lecter. The reality is typically more pedestrian—your average serial killer tends to be of normal to subnormal intelligence. There are, however, exceptions to this rule, including Gary Heidnik, whose IQ was tested at 148, squarely in the gifted range. Despite his apparent smarts, Heidnik dropped out of school and served in the Army. When he was struck ill with gastroenteritis, doctors soon noticed signs of mental illness. Shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder and honorably discharged. Heidnik spent years drifting in and out of mental institutions for a variety of transgressions but was clever enough toincorporate his own church, the United Church of the Ministers of God, which made him a wealthy man.

In 1986, he made the leap from garden variety rape and assault to full-blown kidnapping and torture, taking his first victim, Josefina Rivera, hostage in his basement at 3520 North Marshall Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Within three months, he and an accomplice, Cyril “Tony” Brown (who was mildly mentally challenged and likely at Heidnik’s mercy), had amassed a harem of five women in the basement, all of whom were young African Americans. Shortly after her capture, 24-year-old Sandra Lindsay succumbed to the torment. Heidnik dismembered her corpse, labeling her arms and legs as “dog food” and freezing them. He cooked her ribs in the oven and boiled her head on the top of the stove. The reek of smoldering human flesh had the police knocking on the front door of 3520 N. Marshall, but Heidnik convinced them the smell was from a roast that he had burned. He may have eaten some of Lindsay’s flesh or fed it to his other slaves. Another woman, Deborah Dudley, was killed when the chains that bound her were charged with electricity.

In March 1987, Heidnik abducted the woman who would be his last victim, Agnes Adams. Somehow, Josefina Rivera, the first captive, managed to convince Heidnik to let Adams go. She ran for help, and the three living women in the house were rescued. Heidnik pleaded insanity but was rebuffed. On July 6, 1999, he was executed by lethal injection. Gary Heidnik’s house still stands, a narrow and decrepit beige stucco structure in north Philadelphia a few blocks away from the apartment where Rocky Balboa lived in the original Rocky film. These days, it sports a satellite dish.

4The Clutter House
Oak Street, Holcomb, Kansas

Photo credit: Spacini

Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were small-time career criminals who had served time at Kansas State Penitentiary. While incarcerated, a fellow inmate named Floyd Wells informed Hickock of a farm where he had once worked whose owner, Herb Clutter, allegedly kept a safe stacked with cash. The men arranged to attack the farmhouse upon their release. On November 14, 1959, they cut the phone lines to the house and tied up the family—Herb, his wife, and their children, 16-year-old Nancy and 15-year-old Kenyon.

When it was revealed that there was no great fortune to be had, an enraged Smith slit Herb Clutter’s throat. The rest of the family was dispatched with shotgun blasts to the head. Hickock and Smith made a clean getaway, but after Wells heard about the murders, he promptly snitched. The pair was arrested on December 30 in Las Vegas. Both tried to plead insanity but were convicted of murder and sentenced to death. They were hanged on April 14, 1965.

Hardly the most sensational case on this list, the Clutter murders would have likely sunk into obscurity if not for novelist Truman Capote, who investigated the incident and wrote about it in the true crime classic In Cold Blood, in which he took significant liberties with the facts. The Clutter house still stands, a nondescript two-story brick structure surrounded by seven acres of flat Kansas land. It was built by Herb Clutter in 1948 for $40,000. A 1967 film adaptation of In Cold Blood was filmed at the house, and tours were given to the curious for a brief time. It is now privately owned and no longer open to the public.

3Jeffrey Dahmer’s Childhood Home
4480 West Bath Road, Bath Township, Ohio

The apartment of cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer made the top spot on a previous list, but if one killer bears repeating so soon, it’s him. In fact, Dahmer’s childhood home has suddenly acquired a whole new notoriety. In one of their bizarre publicity stunts, animal activists from PETA considered buying the property and turning it into a vegan restaurant, which they intended to call “Eat For Life: Home Cooking.” Despite insisting that their bid was serious, PETA has since changed their minds about the plan.

The house, which was put on the market for $329,000 in 2012, was the site of Dahmer’s first murder. In 1978, he killed 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks. After burying Hicks in the backyard, he exhumed the body, dissolved the flesh in acid, crushed the bones with a sledgehammer, and then scattered the remains.

2The Pickton Farm
953 Dominion Avenue, Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada

Photo credit: Renegade98

The humble pig is a far more intelligent than most people give it credit for, but if there is one part of its reputation this animal deserves, it is its appetite. As unrepentant omnivores, pigs will devour anything in their path. Terry Garner learned this the hard way, when the 70-year-old Oregon farmer waseaten by his pigs, a rare but not unheard-of occurrence. In fact, serial killer Robert Pickton used the voracious nature of his hogs to hide the evidence of his crimes, feeding the remains of mutilated prostitutes to the animals. By the late 1990s, the disappearance of dozens of women and tips regarding Pickton’s property began to mount, and in February 2002, police finally raided the farm.

What they found there was worse than anything anyone could have anticipated. There were body parts in freezers, bits of bone and flesh scattered throughout the property, and teeth that had passed undigested through the pigs’ stomachs. Police also found the tattered clothes and ID cards of the missing women. How many victims Robert Pickton claimed during his murderous career is unknown, but he told an officer posing as a cellmate that he had killed 49 women, and his own carelessness led him to fall shy of his goal of 50. A massive excavation effort costing approximately $70 million took place in an attempt to determine just how many people lost their lives on the farm. It was alleged in the investigation that he may have sold human meat to the public mixed in with pork. Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

Should you choose to visit this awful place, you will find it is not located in the middle of nowhere—it’s actually sandwiched between a suburban neighborhood and a golf course. Across the street stands a massive Costco store. The rambling structures on the farm were all demolished, and today the property is fenced off, owned by the government of British Columbia under lien to pay for Pickton’s $10 million in court costs.

1The Lizzie Borden House
92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts

Photo credit: dbking

Your average bed and breakfast is the very picture of serenity—historical, typically family-run establishments where floral print wallpaper can be seen in abundance. Their usual draw is proximity to tourist destinations like beaches. But for those of a decidedly more macabre bent, a stay can be had in the former Borden home, where Lizzie Borden allegedly murdered her father and stepmother in cold blood.

Andrew Borden was a wealthy businessman known for pinching pennies. For example, the family home had no indoor plumbing, although he could have well afforded it. However, he was known to be extremely generous with the family of his wife, leading to tensions between him and his daughters, Lizzie and Emma.

The folk rhyme has it that the Bordens were taken out with an axe, but the murder weapon was actually a hatchet. Mrs. Borden caught one blow across her head, and when she fell, her killer sat on her back and struck the back of her skull 19 times. Andrew was likely taking a nap on a couch downstairs when he was struck 10 or 11 times, one blow splitting his eyeball in half. Lizzie was the one to “discover” his body, calling out for a maid on the third floor.

Despite her bizarre, contradictory statements, Lizzie was acquitted of the crime. She and her sister used their considerable inheritance to move into a new house in the fashionable neighborhood of Fall River. Despite being largely ostracized, she remained there until her death in 1927.

Today, the house on 92 Second Street operates as the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum. Rooms can be rented for a reasonable rate, and a stay features a tour of the property and its lurid history. Many claim that the house is haunted, and ghost cams are set up throughout the mansion with the hope of recording some mutilated specter.

7 most Creepiest Commercials To Ever Hit The Small Screen

7Phones 4u

Believe it or not, this is indeed a phone commercial. It’s actually part of aseries of commercials from 2011 by UK mobile phone retailer Phones 4u. The ads were conceived by Aidan McClure and Laurent Simon and directed by Garth Jennings through production company Hammer & Tongs. The campaign was created with the hope of widening the retailer’s demographic from 18–24 to 18–34 and generating controversy that would lead to more overall awareness of the company and increase potential sales. Though complaints were filed to the company, the company issued a statement that the ad was meant to “build tension,” not to scare innocent children who just may be watching.

6K-Fee

“Ghost Car” is a commercial made in Berlin in 1999 for German soft drink company K-Fee created by advertising agency Jung von Matt. The video hit the Internet in 2005, where it became not only one of the first viral videos on YouTube but one of the first videos ever uploaded to the site.

This video is a “screamer” video, following a similar formula to other K-Fee commercials, starting with peaceful footage of everyday events only to be disrupted by a zombie or gargoyle screaming loudly to make the viewer jump. It was a remarkably effective campaign, considering that none of the ads mention the company name or product.

5The Dark And Lonely Water

Released in 1978 and voted the fourth-favorite PSA of all time in the UK, this 90-second clip called “Dark and Lonely Water” features the sinister voice of Donald Pleasence as the personification of evil water. The video ends as the voice echoes the ominous warning “I’ll be back-back-back.” Originally known by the much creepier title “The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water,” the clip was meant to warn children about the dangers of careless behavior in the vicinity of water.

After airing regularly for years on children’s TV stations, “Dark and Lonely Water” quickly earned virtual cult status as one of the most chilling PSA videos ever. Unlike many PSAs, this one did have an impact, though not necessarily the one the Central Office of Information intended. Many of the children who viewed the commercial not only became more careful when around water, they stopped swimming altogether, fearing death if they so much as dipped a toe in a puddle.

4Fragile Childhood

Finnish organization Lasinen Lapsuus (“Fragile Childhood”), which fights parental alcohol abuse, titled a series of PSAs “Monsters” in which parents are seen as monsters through their children’s eyes when they drink. Before the commercial aired, the company posted a request on their Facebook page for adults who grew up in households affected by substance abuse to share their stories and opinions.

After reading some of the posts and watching “Monsters,” it’s easy to make the connections between the real-life descriptions and some of the creatures chosen for the powerful video directed by Mikko Lehtinen. Here are just a few quotes posted in response to the request:

“Just because you haven’t had a bad experience doesn’t make it any less real.” –Alias Hurmur

“Only at an adult age would I come to realize why Santa smelled funny.” –Alias A.

“I can remember learning in school not to drink and drive and then have to get into the car with my drunk dad after every family function.” –Alias Ano.

3Japanese Tire Commercial

You know you’ve stepped into dark advertisement territory when a parental advisory warning flashes across the screen. Autoway Tires, a tire shoplocated in Fukuoka, Japan, takes it a step further and displays a health warning that reads, “Not for the faint of heart. Please refrain from watching the content if any of the following applies to you: Have any mental or physical health concern and may have to see a doctor regularly. We shall not be liable for any injuries, illness, and damages claimed to be caused by watching the contents.”

Despite the commercial’s shocking nature, it is actually a clear forewarning of the dangers of driving on icy winter roads when you don’t have proper tires. Sadly, many people who watch the video find themselves so shaken by what they have seen that they don’t notice the tagline and product details at the end, missing the commercial’s message. The horrifying commercial has since been dubbed “one of the scariest ads ever.”

2Ronald McDonald’s 1963 Television Debut

The origin of Ronald McDonald can be traced back to 1960s local radio personality Willard Scott, who rocked a McDonald’s cup nose as well as a belt that magically contained hamburgers. Willard was already well versed in clowning, having played Bozo the Clown on WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. from 1959–1962. He once even claimed to have created the Ronald McDonald character in an excerpt from his book, Joy of Living, in which he states, “At the time, Bozo was the hottest children’s show on the air. You could probably have sent Pluto the Dog or Dumbo the Elephant over and it would have been equally as successful. But I was there, and I was Bozo . . . There was something about the combination of hamburgers and Bozo that was irresistible to kids . . . That’s why, when Bozo went off the air a few years later, the local McDonald’s people asked me to come up with a new character to take Bozo’s place. So, I sat down and created Ronald McDonald.”

In the years to come, Ronald indeed replaced Bozo, but he could not rid the world of the terror that clowns instill in children and adults everywhere. The first McDonald’s ad featuring Ronald aired in 1963, portrayed by Willard himself—and did nothing to help.

1Krinkles The Clown

Krinkles was the 1960s mascot for Post’s Sugar Krinkles Rice Cereal. He promoted a balanced breakfast that will keep us fueled for the day, which seems a bit hypocritical for a creature who so obviously fueled himself on the fears and screams of children. You would think that a black and white commercial wouldn’t be as scary as its aforementioned technicolor counterparts, but the lack of color does nothing but contribute to its creepiness.

Believe it or not, Krinkles wasn’t the company’s most controversial spokesman. He was actually created to replace the cereal’s previous mascot, a stereotypical Chinese boy named “So-Hi” because he could only reach so high. So-Hi was quickly removed from cereal boxes and commercials after it was quite rightly pointed out that he was the most racist thing. Marjorie Merriweather Post, owner of Post at the time, deemed Krinkles a “safer” alternative. Our nightmares beg to differ.

7 Most Weird Environmental Issues With Serious Impacts On Wildlife

7The Orangutan Palm Oil Crisis

Photo credit: Hayden Llewellyn

When we think of global deforestation crises, we tend to imagine the Amazon challenges frequently reported, or we look suspiciously at our teak desk sitting in the corner of the room. However, one of our closest relatives is vanishing along with its rainforest environment. Ground zero is Malaysia and surrounding countries, and the culprit could be in your cupboard or chocolate bar.

Found in a vast range of products, palm oil is produced from plantations of non-native African oil palms in Southeast Asia. In Borneo and Sumatra, the last stronghold of the orangutan, palm oil plantations have destroyed and continue to destroy thousands of acres of premium orangutan habitat.

Many orangutans that do not escape quickly enough are killed by thoughtless land speculators and farmers connected with large palm oil ventures. As a result, entire verdant landscapes are laid to waste, and our red-haired cousins are facing disastrous declines in population.

6Avian Obstacle Collisions

Photo credit: Roland Zh/Wikimedia

Birds are the airplanes of the natural world. Unfortunately, that leaves them vulnerable to the same disasters that claim planes: crashes.

This is partly our fault. Though birds’ navigation skills are so extraordinary that they baffle scientists, that doesn’t save them from the treacherous obstacles man has put up. Telecommunications and media distribution structures such as television towers are estimated to kill a whopping seven million migratory birds per year.

Birds become disoriented while migrating and may fly right into the towers. Collisions with cables may occur even in broad daylight. Tower impacts are especially terrifying due to the percentage of populations they may claim—97 percent of birds killed are beautiful songbirds, and even marsh birds such as yellow rails are affected, with one-tenth of their population killed per year.

Conservationists have proposed several methods for reducing mortality, including location planning or changes in lighting. Flashing safety lights may attract far fewer birds than the solid lights we typically use.

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5Pharmaceutical Pollution

Photo credit: Jacob Graham Savoie

When human urine contaminated with drugs enters the sewage treatment system, chemical traces may pass into aquatic ecosystems. The results vary from the concerning to the truly bizarre. Scientists have discovered increased rates of hermaphroditism in frogs living in some urban waterways, and gender ratios in fish populations may be skewed. Pharmaceutical products that contain estrogen may impede reproductive development and disrupt the endocrine system.

Herb Buxton of the USGS Toxic Substances Hydrology Program sampled water in streams and detected traces of 95 drugs and manufactured chemicals. About 80 percent of streams contained pharmaceutical contaminants.

The most extreme example of pharmaceutical contamination has occurred in India and nearby nations. There, populations of vultures declined by over 90 percent in many areas from traces of the human anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac. The fall in vulture numbers has meant a rise in the number of uneaten livestock carcasses—which has boosted the population of feral dogs. This, in turn, has led to a frightening jump in rabies cases.

4Forest Fragmentation

Photo credit: Martin Wegmann

Parks are often designed for beauty, leaving just small patches of forest as nature reserves among areas of farmland. While these sites may appear to be teeming with forest birds, the wildlife may actually be the victim of an international problem known as population sink effects.

Forest patches of a reduced size attract multiple species of songbirds to breed. But these patches also attract increased levels of predators, such as squirrels, raccoons, and snakes. These predators can spot the birds more easily in these reduced patches, so they raid the nests for easy pickings. The whole bird species population then declines in size.

3Predator Declines And Ecosystem Collapse

In nature, the taking of individual lives may promote the population’s health. For that reason, predation by wild animals is not a bad thing for ecosystems.

Wolves have long been falsely maligned for their supposed damage to animal populations, but their “top down control” accomplishes three things. They cull sick animals. They distribute nutrients by moving biomass. And, of special importance, they limit the populations of prey and therefore limit their ecological impact. In Yellowstone National Park, wolf reintroductions caused declines in elk, which allowed the restoration of riparian vegetation and beaver populations. It ultimately led many small birds and animals to return to the park.

Wherever large predators disappear, disturbing effects may occur. Jaguar loss may cause rainforests to become denuded by grazing. The loss of large predatory fish such as sharks may throw aquatic ecosystem conditions far out of balance as mid-level predators proliferate. The decline of predators remains one of the most counterintuitive and damaging environmental problems worldwide.

2The Feline Feather Felony

While cats and canaries may be comic enemies in popular culture, the reality for North American birds is more serious. Massive numbers of songbirds across North America lose their lives to marauding house cats, which may represent one of the most significant causes of avian population declines.

Scott Loss of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute has determined that free-roaming cats kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds a year. The magnitude of the problem becomes terrifyingly large when one considers that the total population of land-dwelling birds in North America is somewhere between 10 and 20 billion. That means we lose a staggering 5–15 percent of birds to cats alone per year.

1Chytrid Fungus

Photo credit: Forrest Brem

As a group, frogs are among the most endangered animals on the planet due to their sensitivity to environmental changes. A global extinction crisis of disturbing proportions is now unfolding among them due to a decidedly creepy cause: fungus outbreaks.

A disease triggered by exposure to the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis has been found by researchers on at least 287 amphibian species in 36 nations. “Chytridiomycosis” is responsible for declines in amphibian populations in Australia, North and South America, Europe, Central America, Africa, and New Zealand. Causing serious skin outbreaks and a wide range of body damages, chytrid kills amphibians with relative ease. It’s now thought responsible for over 100 species extinctions.

While these fungi are natural, their spread worldwide is anything but. The culprit is human activity, with transportation of amphibians for research and the pet trade to blame for the unnatural spread of the deadly chytrid fungus.

Christopher Stephens is a graduate student in environmental sciences at Royal Roads University, an outdoor adventurer, and a busy freelance writer. He leads birding tours for Pacific Rainforest Tours that offer local and international visitors the best of the Pacific Northwest bird scene!