Chris, d oes this situation of common but unnamed bats exist elsewhere in
the developed world?
Not in the same way, I would think. If I tell bat workers in Europe about
having two un-named species in the middle of Brisbane, they think I'm
kidding, and then find it scandalous. There are certainly many issues to be
resolved in bat taxonomy in Europe and North America, but they are mostly at
a much more subtle level than the problems in Australia.
But to be fair, the problems faced in Australia are different, because of
the low population density (meaning less bat workers per bat) and historical
problems with type specimens and the difficulty of sorting out the myriad of
populations which exist and how they relate to each other over the scale of
a continent, most of which is not occupied by bat workers. Bats are
generally much more difficult to work with than birds - very distinctive
species often don't look too different to a human.
The biggest problem is that the importance of the process has largely been
lost. At the same time, museums throughout the world have been starved of
resources and the perceived value of long-term collections keeps getting
downgraded. Genetic work has largely supplanted the methodical morphological
work which was the mainstay in the past, and while genetic work has
tremendous value and has done a lot to resolve many taxonomic issues, it
isn't everything. Consider just the point that you can work out how to
identify taxa genetically, but unless someone puts the work into resolving
morphological correlates, that doesn't help anyone know how to identify
those animals in the field. It is quite right that genetic work has become
so prominent. What is troubling is that it has done so at the expense of any
other approaches.
Genetics won't solve everything - there are species which act as very good
species in the traditional sense or even morhpologically, which genetic work
fails to resolve. Better techniques can be expected to improve this. But it
won't solve the problem that people skilled in the morphological side of it
are dying out and not being replaced. This will inevitably cause a brain
drain and a loss of skills which are increasingly important to wildlife
management, yet increasingly difficult to replace. But not everyone will be
unhappy about that....
Unfortunately, that part of the human population which cares (and I really
think it is a big part) happily goes along believing the governing powers
are looking after things. How many of you know that Australia has just lost
yet another mammal? The Christmas Island Pipistrelle (yes another bat) has
been declining precipitously for years (it used to be very common), yet
nothing was done except when it was completely too late. Yep - they found
one bat. Hopefully this couldn't happen with birds, because there are so
many people like yourselves who are keeping an eye on things.
Or are there? I was dismayed to hear the latest news about the Western
Ground parrot, and bizarrely enough, the perception that elevating it to
species status might save it. For crying out loud! Twenty years ago the
Queensland Forest Service, no less, accepted the notion that it shouldn't be
making regional populations of anything extinct. Not just named taxa, but
regional populations. Why isn't this Parrot's status news, and well known to
everyone? It seems to me it would make a difference if the public actually
KNEW about it! I doubt people are all that blase about a parrot going
extinct!
Cheers, Chris.
===============================
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:
===============================
|
