Is there anyone out there who is prepared to offer a justification for these
practices? Anyone who can quantify how it benefits the birds??
Back in 2002, I was living in the USA and volunteered on a spring migration
banding team on the Lake Erie southern shore - one of the major migration
hotspots.
I guess my motivation was the opportunities it would offer to see and
photograph birds at close quarters.
But I didn't last long - I was appalled by the mortality and trauma involved.
Not many birds actually injured themselves or died in the mist nets (though one
death is one too many), but many got so badly entangled that they were injured
being extracted from the nets. And there was a further mortality rate of birds
in the keep bags. I quit pretty quickly!
As far as I could see, the only entities benefitting from the exercise were the
(human) banders/organisers in being able to report "higher numbers than last
year", and to thus gain further funding to do it all over again the next year.
I think by now we know the migratory ranges of most every species, so the
practice of banding/flagging is surely past it's use-by date.
Trevor Manley
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