What will these industries hold for the future of our native birds? Will it be good or bad? What can be done for all to coexist? Or are efforts in conservation just a lost cause. Is anything being done at the moment or are we facing another mass extinction event?
Conservation is never, ever a lost cause. The industries you mention can be sustainable if conservation is taken into account. Mind you, 'sustainable' has become a very loose term... Especially 'sustainable growth', which is by definition oxymoronic.
IMO, we are facing another mass extinction event- the extinction rate has surged well above the standard background levels. So much so than many scientists are suggesting that we have moved into a new geological age- the Anthropocene, where human activity is one of the driving forces on the planet.
We are not just facing a mass extinction of species - we're right in it at this very moment.
I, for one, refuse to give in to the Earth wreckers - not that my efforts will have a huge conservation impact but to become apathetic or simply accept what these developers are doing is a waste of my time. This is because I place a very high value on Earth & it's life forms.
I believe such has been the damage to Earth that we are well beyond the point of compromise. But therein lies the greatest dilemma we've ever faced: if we don't compromise we don't achieve anything at all such is the power of the system within which we live & work. It seems that Earth is dying a death of a thousand compromises. So addicted are voters to money & material things that the democratic system is only likely to do anything environmentally substantive when the environment can no longer support their addiction. The big questions are: At this point will the decline in the environment be irreversible & which species will be among the survivors?
So voracious is the appetite for economic growth that agriculture, horticulture & perhaps tourism, are the only industries beginning to adopt a sense of environmental responsibility because they are becoming aware that their existence depends on it. All other industries are directed towards exploitation of Nature until the last microbe is left to turn out the lights. It's up to us to try to turn this around but what a fight this is turning out to be!
Be brave, one & all.