Yesterday’s debate about the birds of Cocos and Christmas Islands and whether
they belong on the Australian list made for rather unpleasant reading in my
view. It was a very one-sided discussion by people who seem to know very little
about the islands or about the nature of bird lists as they relate to geography
and political boundaries.
Lets start with geographical and political boundaries. How many of you keep a
list of Australian birds that you’ve seen in your home state? Perhaps you know
where the state boundaries are but do you know why they are there and who put
them there? What purpose do the states serve, and how would this be relevant to
birds? How many of you keep a list of birds you’ve seen in your home bioregion?
Do you know what Australian bioregion you live in, where the boundaries are,
and what defines it? How many bioregions are there in Australia, or in your
home state? What relevance are bioregions to birds?
France is a fine country that I have never been to. I can see from a map that
it has a sea boundary and some straight lines called a border that separate it
from other countries on the same land mass in the same bioregion. I’m no
history buff, but weren’t those lines put there by men (sensu stricto) after
wars in the extremely recent geological past? Malaysia is also a nice country.
It is an artificial collection of British Territories on the Malay Peninsular
and Borneo. Borneo includes two other countries, one confined to Borneo and one
not. Sumatra and Peninsular Malaysia have more biogeographical affinities with
each other than either has to Borneo, but Sumatra is part of Indonesia.
Singapore is an island off the tip of Malaysia that you could swim to if you
don’t mind mud. You don’t put Singapore birds on your Malaysian list, but
theoretically you could if you stood in Malaysia and watched them fly over
Singapore. Indonesia, another
artificial country of former Dutch territories contains land in four major
bioregions, The Greater Sundas, Wallacea Peninsula Malaysia (Batam etc) and New
Guinea. New Guinea is part of the Australian bioregion but is governed by
Indonesia and PNG. Recently it was half Australian and half Dutch. The northern
most Torres Strait islands are spitting distance away from PNG but on the
Australian birding map.
Christmas Island rose from the sea some 50 mya and 10 degrees south of where it
now lies (or so it’s thought). It was uninhabited until the British claimed
sovereignty over Christmas Island in 1888 and it was administered as part of
Singapore until 1958 when the sovereignty was transferred to Australia. The
Cocos (Keeling) Islands where uninhabited until settled by the Hoare and
Clunies-Ross families in 1825. Australia bought the Islands from Clunies-Ross
in 1978, and in 1984 the Cocos-Malays voted overwhelmingly in favour of
political, social, and economic integration with Australia, effectively making
the Islands Australian Sovereign soil.
I haven’t analysed the biogeography of the Cocos Islands in any detail, but I
have studied the biogeography of Christmas Island. Biogeographically it is not
part of Southeast Asia and it is not part of continental Australia. It is an
oceanic island and therefore a bioregion in its own right. The birds take
influences from Southeast Asia and from Australia and from the Palaearctic but
not from the nearby Greater Sundas or Wallacea. A similar situation obviously
applies to the C(K) Is.
Australia ‘owns’ the islands and runs the islands. Australian law applies. The
people who live and work there are Australian citizens or Australian residents
or Australian visitors (or Kiwis). It is just Australia. Christmas Island is
every bit Australian as any town I’ve ever been to and currently has a higher
ration of second and third generation Australians than Sydney or Melbourne do.
It might be a long way from Darwin or Perth, but so is Tasmania or Kangaroo
Island.
The decision to include the birds from Australia’s island territories on the
Australian Checklist was made in 1994 by Christidis & Boles. Like it or not, it
will not be revoked. I don’t see a single credible argument that any of you
have raised for excluding CKI and CI from the Australian birding list. If you
don’t like it, you don’t have to go there. If you find it irksome that others
go birding there and recognise it as part of Australia you need to relax and
get some perspective, or not get involved. If you don’t like field guides
illustrating vagrant birds don’t “worry” about it, just don’t read them. Any
twitcher who claims that their own brand of birding is superior to other brands
of birding is living in a very small universe.
Finally, I find jokes about whether or not refugees in detention are ‘resident’
to be in poor taste. Think about what those people are going through. Many are
genuine refugees suffering grave hardship the likes of which you are unlikely
ever to know, running away from wars to save their families. There are 10 times
as many backpackers living illegally in Australia running away from little more
than mummy and bad weather.
David James
Sydney
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