Hello Greg,
Sure but isn’t that circular reasoning. The act of trying
to capture them is surely the part of the process to ascertain how many birds
were there. With such a cryptic species WA Night Parrot example, until
recently thought possibly to be extinct, how can you know how many are there
otherwise? Although the purpose of trying to band some of them is independent
of how many are there. So what if there were 2 or 50, I don’t see how
that makes any difference to the project proposal of banding some of them, as a
start point to a study.
Philip
From: Birding-Aus
On Behalf Of Greg Roberts
Sent: Saturday, 22 December, 2018 10:26 AM
To: Stephen Ambrose
Cc: birding-aus
Subject: Re: [Birding-Aus] Red Goshawks caught and netted during nesting
season
Thanks for your input Stephen.
I have friends who have been members and even chaired animal
ethics committees. I know there are good people out there doing good work.
However , if we look at the WA Night Parrot example , how
could that netting have been approved when no attempt was made to ascertain how
many birds were there ? By some accounts there was just the single pair, and
they are now gone. And what was the outcome when the ethics committee was
informed of this unfortunate result?
In the case of the Red Goshawk, it is difficult to make a
more firm assessment when both the Queensland Environment Department and Rio
Tinto refuse to answer questions.
