To tell or not to tell (locations of rareties)

["Michael Todd" <>]

Hello Bob and others,

 

Bob Inglis asked the following questions:

 

On the subject of revealing the locations of rare and endangered bird species please consider the following questions:

1/ Who owns Australia's wild birds?

Nobody does.

 

2/ Who decides that a location will be kept secret?

Whoever knows the secret in the first place.

 

3/ By what right and authority do they make that decision?

Everybody has the right and authority to make that decision, including Bob Inglis. I would hope that birdwatchers would take every case on its merit and use their own judgement to decide whether or not to keep soemthing secret.

 

4/ Would anyone agree to the location of a species they have not yet seen being kept secret from themselves?

I would hope that everyone would agree to this (even though I know that many won't) if the non-spreading of a particular location was in the best interests of the birds themselves. My feeling would be that the birds themselves should ALWAYS take priority over our own personal interests even though this may be difficult to control sometimes- me included!

 

5/ Which action is destroying more bird species: trapping or 'development'?

As a general rule, without a doubt development. However, this depends completely on the species involved, and it even varies over scale.

 

6/ How long is a location going to remain secret?

However long it has to remain secret to maintain the well-being of the birds involved.

 

7/ How can a location be monitored effectively if only one or two people know about it?

With great difficulty. Once again it depends on the situation.

 

There is a major difference between Australia and the UK as has been alluded to by others already. Most of Australia has very few people. Its OK to say that a nest won't get raided by illegal egg collectors if there are hordes of birdwatchers standing by 24 hrs a day but this just isn't going to happen in Australia. Even if Australia suddenly undergoes a birdwatching renaissance, with increasing numbers of birdwatchers, added public awareness, increased funding for conservation and research etc (all things that would be great) there still won't be enough to maintain a 24 hour birdwatch over a Purple-headed Goshawk (I made the bird up) nest back of Boulia.

 

As for the lack of an audience enabling people to carry out nefarious activities, they will have it regardless, Australia is too big with too few people relatively to get around this. 99.99% of the time it would be fine to spread the information about where birds have been seen. Vagrants etc usually have no conservation significance, although from more of a moral perspective I'd hate to see them harassed, but ticked off is OK. Even with roosts of rare birds it would probably be OK. But talking about nests of rare birds- and then you are getting into more difficult territory. I would think that most owl researchers would be a little nervous about overkeen twitchers bombarding nesting holes with tapes and spotlights etc. On the other hand if keen twitchers were looking for new locations for rarer birds well then this is a useful outlet for the twitching spasms (sorry about the puns).

 

I hope I haven't stirred up another hornet's nest!

 

Mick Todd

 

Michael Todd
Finch Researcher
Tropical Savannas CRC
c/o Stephen Garnett,
EPA, PO Box 2066, Cairns, Qld, 4870