Every birder loves a rarity. In this age of extinctions, getting to see some of the world’s rarities is a race against time. A recent article in Conservation Letters by a team of researchers at Newcastle University reported that since 1993, at least 21 rare bird species have been saved from extinction in the wild through conservation-driven rescue measures including captive breeding and release, site conservation and invasive species control. A few examples from the list are Spix’s Macaw, Puerto Rico Amazon, Orange-bellied Parrot, Asian Crested Ibis and Madagascar Pochard. All of them, mouth-watering fare for the birder!
A rough definition of ‘rare’ is ‘few and far between’. Evolutionary pressures produce both high density and low density species (common and rare respectively) in the same habitats. But there are also some very small populations of birds that are ‘common where found’, not at all ‘far between’, because their range is so restricted. An island endemic like the Guam Rail (another on the list of rescued species) is such a case, although oceanic islands are just one case of range restriction. The point is that, for the birder, rarity in this case is a matter of remoteness or inaccessibility; once in the right place, the rarity may be common.
Rarity has other dimensions. Under the pressures of human impacts many species get on the ‘rare’ list in the Anthropocene just before they get to be extinct – they are vanishingly rare. This can even be true of once very abundant species, such as the Passenger Pigeon, whose extirpation in 19th Century America is a classic cautionary tale of human-caused extinctions. So, anthropogenic rarity is a synonym for ‘going extinct’. The extinction rate across all organisms in the Anthropocene may be as much as 1000 times the ‘background rate’ of extinctions across the whole of the earth’s existence (a caveat: the ‘normal’ extinction rate is notoriously difficult to estimate, and many scientists have posited lower figures).
Rarities of the ‘few and far between’ kind are, by definition, hard to find if you are looking for them as a birder. But this is not so for most anthropogenically rare species, precisely because of the rescue efforts. Birders know exactly where to look for birds that are being rescued from extinction. Many are kept in captive breeding facilities and, in the wild, are in habitats that are supervised and protected, hence mostly accessible. The exceptions to this include some that are preserved at inaccessible sites that are ‘off bounds’ to all but the scientists and rangers who are managing their protection. A few such sites are kept under wraps to prevent disturbance, particularly by hunters and trappers.
Looking through the list of rescued species in the article cited at the bottom of this blog, most are prominent on the trip lists of guided birding tours. You fly in, drive up, get off the bus and there they are (well, not quite, but you get the gist). Often, the site where our rarities are kept more or less safe is a nature reserve of some kind. Perhaps there is a lodge close by and local guides are on hand who can lead you to the best observation spots, such as a nest, roost or lek. Sometimes, the birds are so closely observed and protected by their carers that they are habituated, so views are stunning and the photo opportunities are superb.
You may have to put in a bit of work, of course, depending on the bird and the site – I mean, not just the travel but rather, the final tracking down and ID. My solitary view of a Spoon-billed Sandpiper (also on the rescued list) was over a half-kilometre of mud, picked out in a mixed flock of hundreds of other waders, through a spotting scope on full zoom. But we knew we’d find it if we looked hard and long enough, as other birders engaged in a survey had told us they were about.
So long as rescue efforts are being made and are successful (for the time being), the extinction crisis is good for birders. By saying that, I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. Indeed, the angst that I feel is not so much that I am implicated in the extinction tragedy just by taking advantage of it as a birder, but rather that as a nature lover (and a naive romantic) I would rather come across a rare bird ‘naturally’, ‘in the wild’ rather than in a setting contrived by human artifice.
Some of my encounters with rare, nearly extinct birds do seem contrived, like visiting a zoo: I know that most of them are only there because they have been captive bred before release; many of them are hanging about by the feeders; most of them are showing off the rings on their legs because they are being monitored; and they are continuously and almost fearlessly in the presence of humans.
This is all seems a bit dodgy – no self-respecting birder ticks birds that are kept in a zoo. But the American Birding Association (ABA) rules about what is a tickable ‘wild’ bird would put the Orange-bellied Parrot on the right side of the line (just about): the surviving population of some 50 birds in the wild does exist ‘unrestrained by human hand’ (those are the ABA’s words). Some breed successfully in the wild and they all migrate every year to the mainland of Australia. However, many don’t make it back to the Tasmanian breeding site (there is only one such site left these days) and the population has to be replenished each year with additional releases of captive-bred birds. Some birding purists might still turn up their nose because of the degree of human intervention entailed in all of this, but the ABA says you can put this bird on your list.
Yet it does feel a bit like cheating. Far more satisfying, at least from this birder’s perspective is, after a couple of days searching across its historic habitat, to come across a rare bird that is part of a surviving population that is living in the wild just as it has always done, without such levels of human intervention.
But now I’m being a bit daft, because such a population, if unprotected, is likely soon to be exterminated. If I can find them, so can the hunter and trapper, while any number of natural events could send them over the brink. Two cases in point are the White-shouldered Ibis and the Giant Ibis, both hanging on in the depleted habitat of the Northern Plains of Cambodia. Both are critically endangered, with an estimated population of a few hundred surviving in the wild.
Cambodian birding tour companies and international conservation NGOs work with local communities and encourage them to stop hunting the Ibis and further damaging their habitat. Instead, they are incentivised to look after them, because they attract visiting birders who come with their precious dollars. For example, in one village a local landowner is being paid not to chop down some dead trees where the White-Shouldered Ibis like to roost. When I was one such visitor, we took a short excursion from the locally-owned lodge where we were staying and watched as around thirty birds flew in at dusk.
The Giant Ibis took a bit more work. It took several evening and morning excursions into the bush to some likely roosting trees, finally to come across a pair one damp, misty dawn. We sat at a respectful distance and waited for the sky to brighten. They flew before the light was bright enough for a good image on my camera.
But even now, maybe I’m kidding myself in placing extra value on these magical encounters. Expressions like ‘in the wild’ are anthropogenic constructs. There is no untrammelled ‘wild’ or ‘wilderness’ out there anymore, now that we have more or less explored and inhabited all of it, in the process modifying it. The Northern Plains of Cambodia have been stripped of many trees and most of their mammalian populations, including a spectacular megafauna which was decimated during Cambodia’s post-colonial civil wars, both for the wild meat and medicinal trades and for local consumption to stave off starvation. Today, commercial pressures to log trees and convert land to large-scale agriculture are very strong.
In this setting, the Giant Ibis was thought extinct until rediscovered in 1993. It is still hanging on, in much denuded and degraded habitats. Birding tourism has played a part in keeping these surviving Ibis alive, that is, until the COVID 19 shutdown of international travel. I just received my latest on-line edition of Birding Asia from the Oriental Birding Club, containing an editorial by chairman John Gregory in which he references the current problems faced by the local Tmatboey community in funding its Ibis conservation program, and the growing incentives in this situation for local villagers once again to take up hunting and trapping.
As birders, we are part of a growing community that places high value on the conservation of endangered species and makes some contribution towards that end. Because we are such avid consumers of nature, this gives us a special obligation to make sure that we help conserve it, and this includes supporting communities such as Tmatboey. A happy feature of extinction birding is that it almost always contributes to the rescue effort, because our visits very often put funds and other resources into the rescue effort.
So, we go on birding, both celebrating and lamenting what we see. We won’t put the Anthropocene in reverse as a matter of deliberate policy. But at least we can do whatever we can to preserve and restore the remnants of what the natural world once was, deploying all the money, technology and organised effort we can muster for the sake of restitution, repair and conservation. Fortunately for birders, in some circumstances just going birding can be part of this.
Citations
Bolam, F.C, Mair, L., Angelico, M., Brooks, T.M, Burgman, M., McGowan, P. J. K & Hermes, C. et al. (2020). ‘How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented?’ Conservation Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1111/conl.12762
John Gregory, ‘Chairman’s Letter’, BirdingASIA, 33(2020), p.3. Also, the report in Cambodianess at bit.ly/2Ems9iz