BBC R4: Is it worth saving Spix's Macaw?

Coming up later today on BBC R4: Is it worth saving Spix's Macaw? With Nigel Collar & Hugh Possingham. Always an engaging speaker, Nigel is author of many articles and books on bird conservation, including Birds to Watch, Threatened Birds of Africa and Related Islands, Threatened Birds of the Americas and Facing Extinction: The world's rarest birds and the race to save them.

Spix's Macaw is Critically Endangered, Possibly Extinct in the Wild.

Spix's Macaw - Conservation Triage
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0477ph3

How does the world of conservation set its priorities? Shared Planet reports from Qatar and the effort being spent to save the Spix Macaw from extinction in captivity. Occasionally, when the battle to save a species from extinction has almost been lost, the only alternative is to catch the remaining individuals to be kept safe and bred in captivity with no certainly of ever being returned to the wild. In this episode of Shared Planet Monty Don asks whether last hope fights to prevent single extinctions are viable or do we need to start prioritising conservation funding to secure the future or greater numbers of species?

I listened to this programme and thought that it gave plenty of food for thought. I was especially interested in the Australian 'triage' approach and would have liked to have heard more. Is it more realistic? Is it a better approach?

I read Tony Juniper book on Spix's Macaw a while ago and so was interested to here an update on the situation with this bird.

Hello Ruth, as Possingham says, triage is happening, whether we like it or not. I think at the moment there are a mix of approaches. Certainly, we should not be giving up on species before we're certain that they are extinct (the Romeo error!), but at what point do you stop investing resources that could perhaps do more good elsewhere? Ivory-billed Woodpecker is a classic example, where tens of millions of USD have been diverted from worthwhile projects into an ill-advised and fruitless search for a bird that has almost certainly been extinct for decades (in the US - Cuban Ivory-bills are more likely to be extant, although they may be a separate species). Another big resource-sink is spending resources to conserve charismatic birds in countries that are at the edge of their range and where the birds are scarce - Avocets in the UK is an example.

This whole issue of prioritisation is worth thinking about. When all's said and done, just one day's worth of current military spending would finance years of vital global conservation work - so that is where the real decisions are to be made, but unfortunately also where the most economically powerful vested interests are as well! It seems we currently prefer killing each other and making money from the process to looking after ourselves and the rest of the planet's inhabitants.

A good overview of all this is Facing Extinction: The world's rarest birds and the race to save them by Paul Donald (RSPB), Nigel Collar et al. - I'm reading a library copy at the moment. With the 100th anniversary of Martha's death coming up on 1 September this year, the first lines of the Preface are rather chilling:-

In 1866, a single flock of perhaps more than three billion Passenger Pigeons Ectopistes migratorius was recorded passing overhead in Ontario, Canada. Less than fifty years later, the last ever Passenger Pigeon, named Martha, died in an aviary in Cincinnati Zoo. Intense hunting pressure and unprecedented changes to the landscape had brought about the extinction of what had been perhaps the world's most numerous bird. Four years after the death of Martha, the world's last Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis lay dead in the very same aviary. Collapsing populations of Passenger Pigeons in the 1880s and 1890s caused professional hunters to train their guns instead on another abundant bird, the Eskimo Curlew Numenius borealis. The last confirmed record of this species was in Barbados in 1963 and it is now almost certainly extinct. Abundance, even superabundance, is clearly no guarantee against extinction.

I believe there are currently just shy of 100 Spix's Macaws remaining in captivity, with the possibility of maybe a dozen more in undeclared private ownership.

The annual BirdLife Redlist updates are published today: http://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/Red-List-for-birds-2014

Chris
I understand your desire for some unified (single body) prioritization of conservation efforts. I have thought about that also. However there is an opposing view. I believe that having multiple efforts independently determining where to apply independent resources provides more protection against the inevitable biases of a large single source and hence better, quicker application of resources to vastly scattered problems. Secondly many of the conservation efforts independently occurring around the world are privately funded and not subject to or available to government and NGO bodies. I think the Spix's Macaw program is exactly that, a private effort. Those efforts are done because of personal interest and the resources would not be available if that personal interest was dictated to.
There are risks with private efforts, i.e. the Spix's Macaw effort is being done in a region of the world not known for stability, but alternatively there is no other body bellying up to the bar so to speak, to do the work. To a great extent I have come down on the side of independent efforts. Of course I would also love to see the hose of resources going to military activities redirected to more humanity needed areas. But then pigs could fly if...........

I have just returned from Hawai'i and was truly amazed at the magnitude of the alien species of birds, plants, mammals and reptiles on O'ahu. I was there for a wedding but took the opportunity for birding and botanical garden visits. Alien species of land birds have in essence totally displaced endemic species below 1500ft elevation. I thought European Starlings and House Sparrows were a big deal in N. America.....it's nothing compared to O'ahu. I picked up a book that looks interesting along these lines..."Restoring Paradise: rethinking and rebuilding nature in hawaii" by Robert Cabin. I haven't started it yet but it seems to address efforts being made try to reverse some of the botanical invasions that have occurred there.

We humans certainly have stirred the earthly pot..............

Also am currently reading The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life by Alan de Queiroz.

Hello bluejw, I'm not advocating a "unified (single body) prioritization of conservation efforts". We already have international agreed criteria for assessing the conservation status of species - expressed as the IUCN Redlist - but there are no agreed global conservation priorities (the most threatened species are not necessarily the highest conservation priorities - that depends on the perspective of the investor / actor). I agree that a mix of activities is a good thing, but narrow national efforts, or those which are not based on evidence (Ivory-billed Woodpecker) are a waste of scarce resources. And I'm optimistic that we can channel the obscene subsidies we give to military corporations into vital investment for good. If not, we are in for a very rough ride. There are some encouraging precedents.