Spot on Rex
For several years we have walked the Kaurna wetlands near Adelaide with
and without dogs. The daily lists and population figures are similar.
In this thread, there appears to be confusion separating harmless
disturbance from real harmful impacts.
There is an oval near Adelaide. One day there were 600+ silver gulls
resting on it. After 2 dogs with their owner walked across, less than
200 gulls returned. A decline of more than 60%. That afternoon an
observer could have written that dogs caused more than a 60% decline in
the local gull population.
Compare this with damage caused to a healthy breeding population of
birds from bushfire management practices There are officially condoned
bushfire management practices known as "spring burning" otherwise known
as protective or reduction burning. Some farmers also use it to promote
grasslands. Of course we need some prescriptive bushfire hazard
reduction and strategic pre-winter burning may be an acceptable
compromise but officially burning in spring only demonstrates how far we
have really come in efforts to conserve the natural environment
In Tasmania as we speak, official spring burning is happening everywhere
with seeming disregard to its impacts on breeding fauna or to it's
influence on the spread of woody weeds. Last week near St Helens, the
destruction of an area supporting breeding Tawny-crowned Honeyeaters and
Calamnthus etc. was nearly complete. And the carbon footprint from this
activity? It would rival any chain of coal powered electricity
generators known to man. So lets keep some perspective about domestic
dogs.
Regards
Ian May
St Helens Tasmania
Phone (03) 6312 1123
Rex & Jan Fisher wrote:
I haven't rally followed this thread closely but wonder if we are looking at
the right variables here, eg is it simply the dog or human or their
behaviour, or the noise of their toys, the colour of their clothing etc? I
saw nearly 100 species on a walk I used to regularly do in Brisbane and the
diversity and bird behaviour at any period never seemed to change whether I
was with my dog or not. Obviously there are places such as roost or breeding
sites where it would seem obvious that minimal disturbance would be
advisable (but also taking account of the fact that the presence of
"natural" predators is probably important for ecological balance - unless of
course that balance has been thrown way out of kilter by human interference)
but we need to very careful about extrapolating from such findings.
Regards Rex
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.485 / Virus Database: 269.13.15/1002 - Release Date: 11/09/2007
5:46 PM
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
