YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

The Russian orphanage story bears an eerie resemblence to the stories of Romanian orphanages some two decades ago. Very very sad. The documentary: The Children of Leningradsky deals with children living on their own in Moscow subway stations. http://www.childrenofleningradsky.com/
 

This is a bit like the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The article ends with a reference to the dramatic decline in the London house sparrow population.

It's seven or eight years now since the gang that used to chat away under my window disappeared, the year my neighbours built their extension and the council cut back the bushes around nesting time.

One explanation is that there are less seeds around, but that doesn't convince me. A factor in their continued absence seems to be that house sparrows form small geoggraphically stable communities and unless there are nearby communities that can recolonise an area the territory is left empty.

Instead we've had a boom in great tits and blue tits and I think there are more blackbirds as well, although there are less starlings.
 

@Owen, yes the reporting of the bee situation does remind me a good bit of the begining of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, I think the begining of a stop to this sad trend would be changes in bee management, don't drag the bees around all over the place, it's also possible that being dragged around all over the place messes with their homing ability over time, but I think it's more a question of it interferes with the bee immune system in some way. People take two years to fully acclimate to a new place, to get fully used to the water and the germs. I'm not aware of similar studies about animals, but animals and insects are pretty territorial most of the time. many migratory birds and animals return to the very same places year after year, fish, quadrapeds, birds, like the salmon, and swallows who go to the same places to breed, or the Monarch butterflies, which go to the same forest in Mexico every year.

Speaking of starlings, we have far too many of them here, they eat the robbin's eggs, leaving egg shells all over the place. I wish they'd find something else to do other than be bird gangsters!
It's hard to imagine London without the sparrows, sad too. I like blackbirds, hung out with one for nearly an Dublin while I ate lunch. The same bird came and ate treats I left her, and got really close. I tried to photograph her, but she didn't like that much.

@Shaina, yes this story is really sad, the orphanages in Romania were and remain hellish. I don't know why a commune model, something like a kibbutz type set up couldn't be made to work.
I think part of it is a fact people will not acknowlege, which is that few people really like children they are not related to. A little honesty about that fact would help, the other is that there is a really bad institututional model for orphanages in Eastern Europe generally. I think kids who live in the subway are a bit better off in some ways, at least they have some personal freedom.
But before anyone in America can really point fingers at Russia or Romania, we need to look at the condition of children in foster care in the U.S., it is NOT a pretty picture.
 

Not wanting to ignore the fate of abandoned children - very interesting item on Radio 4's Crossing Continents about Unicef's work with a brave young Moldovan girl who seems to have had no childhood after being left to cope with keeping the household going in the absence of her mother. But that theory of yours about the bees not having time enough for their immune systems to cope with commercial hive transport is intriguing.