Bird Conservation – global evidence for the effects of interventions by David R Williams, Robert G Pople, David A Showler, Lynn V Dicks, Matthew F Child, Erasmus KHJ zu Ermgassen and William J Sutherland. Published by Pelagic Publishing. Paperback £34.99, Hardback £64.99, e-Book £19.99. 575 pages.
This is a very useful reference book for conservation professionals. It is full of quite dull but very important information on the impacts, or lack of them, of conservation interventions. What I mean is that it isn’t a book that you settle down to read for the fun of it but it is a book that you may sometimes need to dip into to inform your conservation decisions.
Having said that, I found myself turning the pages for quite a while after I looked up a subject of interest.
It is, though, a very useful compendium of information on subjects from predator control to nest-box provision, and from paying farmers to conserve birds to using deterrent streamers to reduce seabird bycatch.
The ‘global’ in the title is important as often when reading about subjects of interest to me I came across studies in this book that I knew nothing about and were very relevant. For example, I’m glad I now know that skylark patches work in Switzerland as well as the UK.
In such a compendium of information it’s a bit of a challenge to know where to look to find the information you feel may be there. This book has good contents pages and a good index although I would have liked authors’ names (of relevant papers) to be indexed too.
I couldn’t help but notice that the last study covered was one about which there was a lot of publicity – a project which used a microlite to lead released bald ibis on migration from Austria to Italy – apparently none of them found their way back. Beginnings and successes are more often exciting to publicise than inauspicious endings or failures. This book fills in some of the gaps in an objective way.
This book summarises a huge amount of information in a very accessible way. It will be of great value to conservation professionals as a reference book.
Published by Pelagic Publishing. Paperback £34.99, Hardback £64.99, e-Book £19.99.
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I wonder to what extent this publication differs from that available as a free download at http://www.conservationevidence.com.
It’s a very interesting and valuable resource and includes, as well as skylark patches in Switzerland, a study carried out in Finland in 1993 and 1994 that found that hand-reared grey partridges did not take off to fly as effectively as wild-caught birds, potentially making them more vulnerable to predation.
Hello Mark, this is a controversial subject. Whether to introduce species or leave it to nature. The argument for “man made introductions” is, man destroyed the species in the area so man should re-introduce them. This applies to all forms of wildlife. The alternative view is, man destroyed the Habitat so man should re-create the Habitat. There are important differences here. It is probably risking failure introducing once present forms of wildlife into a habitat no longer suitable to that wildlife. It makes a good story when species are introduced/re-introduced into an area but how suitable is that area now. Osprey will be quoted as a success story but they would have probably returned themselves in time as long as they were not shot by “sportsmen.” Avocets are another example. How many times have/are species re-introduced by nature reserve operators as a “good news” story without taking careful surveys to see if those species are still on site. If they are not then the site is probably not suitable for them. If the species are brought from another site then this is reducing the breeding population on another site. This in turn risks loosing the original population and the introduced ones. The priority MUST be the site condition. This takes longer than the “quick fix” but wildlife has been here for millions of years. This is not restricted to birds but applies to all forms of wildlife. I wonder why people are so arrogant that they think they should decide the fate of all other species? If the wildlife held a referendum to decide our fate, how would we come out of it I wonder. The message to all involved in nature reserves should be, look after your site and the wildlife will use it at their own pace.
I think the book covers rather more possible conservation actions than just re-introductions.
Nowadays I would think that it is widely accepted that re-introductions are very much a last resort course of action. Where they are undertaken there are, again, a set of well recognised principles about how they should be carried out and the most important of these is that whatever factors are believed to have caused the initial extinction are considered to be no longer operating. It would also be the case that following habitat restoration/management it would normally be preferred to allow species to recolonise a site under their own steam and reintroductions should normally be used only where where this is unlikely to occur.
Provided that these principles are applied appropriately and rigorously then I think re-introduction can be a useful and valid technique. I for one am very happy at the success of the reintroductions of White tailed Eagle and Red Kite, for example, in the UK. To take another example I also believe that the reintroduction beavers into various European river systems, such as the Danube has had beneficial ecosystem effects.
Of course it is important to recognise that reintroductions demand a lot of resources if they are to succeed and as resources are always limited, care needs to be taken to ensure that they are used as effectively as possible. This is another reason why reintroductions will always be a relatively small part of conservation activity overall (if often a prominent one). The great benefit of the book that Mark has reviewed is that it collates all the available evidence from studies that have been carried out on the success of various conservation interventions thereby enabling conservation mangers to make more informed choices and decisions about how they use the resources at their disposal.
It would be nice to think that we do not have to ‘decide the fate of other species’ but in the modern world we are obliged to step in and intervene on behalf of other species in all sorts of ways if they are not to be swept aside by our relentless encroachment into their habitats.
A very thought-provoking comment Diapensia.
Thanks for making me think!
“takes longer than the “quick fix”
… and exceeds the duration of a grant, or career, or a vanity project, or the income from a “major visitor attraction” – requiring a car-park, viewing gallery, toilets, cafe, gastro-pub, toilets, bus-station, ultra-fast broadband, mountain-bicycle hire shop, toilets, MEP, music festival, toilets, etc..
I think the arrogance in “restoration” is in the notion that a former state can be achieved against the direction of Time’s Arrow.