Re: [KENYABIRDSNET] Re: [tanzaniabirds] Fw: illadopsis

Dear Mike,

Many thanks for your considered mail which raises some very interesting points, many of which I wholly agree with you on. Please bear in mind that the email below includes my personal feelings on the matter of such bird collection and is by no means meant to be an attack upon you or your own stance.

Firstly, I agree that the collection of birds in the past has advanced our knowledge and understanding immensely and there may, in future, be a particular requirement for one or two specimens to be collected of a particular species in the future. However, I think that even you may shocked and even alarmed at the level of collecting from these forests. The only way that we can truly know the scale of this is to ask the Professor to provide information on the number of individuals of each species that he has collected from Tanzania over the years. I am sure that he has nothing to hide or be ashamed of so let us take a look at the figures that I am “over-reacting” about. That said, if you think that you can look into a crate of 200+ Cabanis’s Greenbul, taken from a small geographical area, and think “Yep, I’m OK with that” then I really do think that is a great shame. The fact that this is a locally common bird does not justify such excessive removal. I would be very interested to know what considerable advances in our knowledge and understanding of the species, and its place within its habitat, have been garnered through collection that could not have been garnered through field observation, photographic images and feather collection.

Secondly, I mostly agree with your comment about the removal of the birds from the forest and their subsequent replacement by the same species. However, this is based on current levels of understanding and it would show typical human arrogance to claim this to be fact, sit back and allow such collection efforts to take place. The only fact that we can be sure of is that we do not know what the impacts of such bird removal will be. History has shown us that when even very abundant and obviously fecund birds are killed at levels, beyond an unknown threshold, that extinctions, both local and global, can and do occur. Again, once we see the numbers from the Professor, we’ll be able to better decide if the numbers are ‘acceptable’ and maybe even 'agreeable'.

I’ll move on to a few areas where I disagree with your comments. You write “Photos are not suitable for capturing all the nuances of bird plumage, and it’s impossible to take photos in a controlled enough situation to make proper comparisons later.” I am wondering if you could outline what these nuances could include as I am sure that just about every conceivable nuance can be captured through imagery. If it meant using ‘forensic’-type methods in the field, so be it but it can be achieved. This is more about the time it takes to ‘process’ a bird in the field – see below.

You write; “I think it takes courage and clear thinking to knowingly kill” I’m sorry Mike but really? I cannot help but think that it takes far more intelligence and a greater level of humanity to develop ways of studying birds and other animals without the need for killing. Killing is easy and almost effortless and that is why the practice continues. It takes far more time, patience and skill to acquire detailed images from the field and to remove the necessary feathers from a bird for sampling at a later date. I have seen this performed in the field and know that it can be done and, more important, IS BEING DONE by those who choose to adopt a more holistic approach to bird science. My biggest argument here is that the practice is archaic and not necessary for the advancement of bird science.

Further, you write that Fjeldsa et al. have “opened up our understanding of the diversification of forest birds in this region and is the basis for sound conservation.” Here, you make it sound as though we should be grateful to the Professor and his team and that we somehow owe him a debt for killing so many birds on our behalf. Again I ask, what could not have been learnt from field observation and DNA sampling of feathers, not to mention vocalisations?

Finally, you write “I don't think you can equate killing a few thousand birds used to answer specific questions from which we all stand to benefit, with killing hundreds of thousands of birds in a mass slaughter.” Personally, from my own morality point of view, I do equate them alike but I do not expect everyone to feel the same way. The Japanese slaughtered whales in the name of science after all; this statement is not missing the point but is open to interpretation. I genuinely accept that we all have a different stance on matters of morality and I think that you, the Professor and I are all located at different points of the scale. I do not profess that mine is right or better, it is just different but certainly not unique.

I do consider myself open-minded Mike and the aim of my original mail was merely to highlight the unpalatable side of the Professor’s work and bring the details out in the open for all to see and make up their own minds. But I’ll leave you with one final thought; would it not be nicer to learn something new about a species in the field without the need for killing it?

With humble regards,

Adam

On 7 May 2014 23:35, Michael Mills <birdsangola@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Adam

This is my first posting on KenyaBirdNet, but I would like to encourage you to be a more open about this. I dabble on the edge of science and do a lot of investigating into African birds, including looking a museum specimens, and unfortunately there is nothing nearly as good and useful for sorting out complex issues as specimens, especially when collected together with DNA from known individuals. Photos are not suitable for capturing all the nuances of bird plumage, and its impossible to take photos in a controlled enough situation to to make proper comparisons later.

The vast majority of forest birds that are particularly confusing and interesting - illadopsis, greenbuls, sunbirds and such like - are in fact rather common and even taking a couple of hundred of each species spread across several sites in Tanzania is not going to really going to drive any species closer to extinction. Birds are continually replacing themselves through reproduction and where there are vacant territories in suitable habitat they will be replaced quite quickly. I think the vast majority of populations of montane forest birds are habitat-limited rather than limited by the removal of individual birds. Of course there is a handful of very rare species (Dapple-throat, perhaps some Alethes, Long-billed Forest Warbler, etc) where sampling for scientific purposes might actually affect populations, but these are very much the exception. In this case - certainly for Endangered and Critically Endangered species - I think there would need to be very special justification for collecting any individuals.

Also, I think it is important to remember that the work the Jon Fjeldsa and colleagues has been doing has opened up our understanding of the diversification of forest birds in this region and is the basis for sound conservation. You might feel that enough sampling has been done, but Tanzania's mountains are so complex and varied that really there is a long way still to go before a complete picture exists. Without a complete picture we cannot know where our conservation priorities lie.

In this day and age there is a little bit of over-reaction to any form of killing. When its done in a planned manner with specific questions in mind I think we generally stand to gain from the exercise. Personally I'm useless at killing and of course I don't like the idea of it, but I think it takes courage and clear thinking to knowingly kill. I doubt Jon or his colleagues enjoy killing, but they know the advantages it has.

Finally, I don't think you can equate killing a few thousand birds used to answer specific questions from which we all stand to benefit, with killing hundreds of thousands of birds in a mass slaughter.

Kind regards
Michael Mills

On 2014/05/07 04:58 PM, Adam Scott Kennedy wrote:

Dear Professor Fjeldså

In your recent correspondence regarding Illadopsis to the tanzaniabirds group, I noted the very unfortunate news that you and Rauri Bowie are planning to 're-start various projects' in the forests of Tanzania.

Does this means that 100s (1000s?) more forest birds, the vast majority of which are already under a massive threat from habitat loss, are likely to be slaughtered in the name of your brand of science? I hope you don't feel I'm being over dramatic about the issue but do you REALLY need more specimens from yet MORE 'collecting efforts'?

I've always considered the Danes to be such brilliant and advanced thinkers and so it staggers me that such archaic practices are still going on. Is there a slim chance that you might be persuaded to develop a more forward-thinking approach and capture images of netted birds for reference, and feathers for DNA sampling at some stage, as so many other forward-thinking ornithologists already do?

My query stems from first-hand reports from genuine conservationists working in Tanzania who have been appalled to see the many boxes of specimens killed by you, Bowie, Kiure, et al. over the years. How can we ever hope to tackle the devastating bird slaughter in Malta and the Middle East while enquiring minds like yours are clearing the East African forests of its threatened avifauna?

Unless you have no objection to the bird slaughter in the Mediterranean, surely this is nothing short of double standards on your part?

Yours in anticipation,

Adam Scott Kennedy

On 7 May 2014 12:05, Neil and Liz Baker <tzbirdatlas@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

On Wednesday, 7 May 2014, 12:04, Jon Fjeldså <jfjeldsaa@snm.ku.dk> wrote:

Dear Don, Margaret, Liz, Neil

Flemming Pagh Jensen informed me about an ongoing discussion about the Tanzanian illadopsis. So I checked up with Rauri Bowie what is happening with the DNA data. A phylogeny based on mitochondrial DNA was done MANY years ago, but while I completed the morphological work (more than 400 specimens of rufipennis/pyrrhoptera, including 74 from Tanzania), Rauri has apparently prioritized other projects that would be better for his struggle to obtain tenure. Now he got his tenure, and has promised me (repeatedly) that he will re-start various projects on Tanzanian forest birds. Yesterday I had a mail from him where he promised to work on this (write up the text for what has been done already and add two nuclear genes for some of the samples, to make sure that some oddities in the mtDNA data is not a result of introgression/hybridizationon.

What can be said so far is that all Tanzanian illadopseses are more closely related to pyrrhoptera than to rufipennis, and that populations are genetically deeply divergent (although with very slight morphological variation, suggesting evolutionary stasis in this climatically stable environment). It seems that distans (Usambara, Kanga, Nguru), puguensis (forests near Dar es Salaam and near Rufiji, and Uluguru foothills) and those of Rubeho and Udzungwa (with no name) represent three distinct species. So having puguensis raised to species rank may help getting attention to this highly threatened population (but I suspect that further small populations could exist in riparian thickets along Rufiji and up towards Uluguru). Outstanding problems: samples from Kiboriani mountains (forest patch above Mpwapwa, which was clearfelled few years ago) group with puguensis, suggesting a small (maybe now extirpated) satellite population of this species, in an unusual (highland) habitat. Further, we don’t know where to place the Zanzibar population (documented by two very poorly prepared specimens collected in 1927 and 1933); on my request, Howell and Msuya went there to search for it some years ago, but found nothing … so maybe another extirpated population.

My text for a paper has been almost ready for publication for some years now … only the text on the genetics lacking … but I hope now that Rauri can speed up so that this can be done within the next couple of months.

Best regards

Jon

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