|
Hi Paul
We could go on in circles about this forever but
I'm sure that you'll share my belief that conservation programs have to be
undertaken properly. The stakes are too high and funding too
limited to do it otherwise. Good science and robust data must be at the
fore of these efforts. Funding should always be carefully metered out on the
basis of the strength of evidence and needs demonstrated by careful study. So,
an initial sighting should get a little funding to have a team in to detect
the bird (two reputable birders or field ornithologists
corroborating on a good view will do, a good photo even better) then, upon
detection you can start to ramp things up a lot more.
As for your idea that the footage of this bird
which the Cornell team are touting as evidence of the rediscovery is "just
short of being absolutely conclusive" I simply don't agree. After all, it
is less than 3 seconds of cropped, highly pixilated,
de-interlaced footage of a distant, partially obscured bird in which no
field marks can be conclusively identified. That's not even a little bit
conclusive. Their "improved version" shows one or two wingbeats from the same
unidentifiable blurry blob phantom-bird. Getting in the "Bigfoot Team" to turn
that blob into an IB Woodpecker has not convinced me in the
slightest.
With the northern Spring coming they have
practically put an army of birders together to track the Ivory-billed Woodpecker
down in coming weeks, so we should at least get some kind of an outcome
from that - preferably something positive. Last year, nobody had anything but
glimpses of "maybes". Just a few people saying that they had fantastic views
would do the trick but more totally crappy footage, recordings of knocks
near camping grounds and roadways or Jethro Hogwrangler's eyewitness
account that "it really looked like it for 1/10th of a second" will not
convince me that it would be appropriate to divert massive funding from
more worthy conservation projects.
I may sound like a "naysayer" in your books, but
my first concern is getting conservation efforts right. We all yearn for the
rediscovery of many wonderful species which have been lost due to human greed
and folly, that's why so many people work so hard to hold back the tide of
unnatural extinctions in the first place. However, I would never be so
imprudent as to back the throwing of heaps of money away on projects which
look very shakey in preference to those which are sure things.
Sydney, Australia
| 