revealed...birdlife the magazine jul-sep 2020 july-september 2020 revealed: our most ambitious...

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JULY-SEPTEMBER 2020

REVEALED: OUR MOST AMBITIOUS CAMPAIGN EVER – HOW IT WILL CHANGE LIVES, AND HOW IT CAN BECOME A REALITY

Let’s make it a human right

to live on a healthy planet.

Argentina Australia

Brazil

Croatia

Austria

Bulgaria

Cuba

Thailand

Azerbaijan

Burkina Faso

Cyprus

Tunisia

Bahamas

Burundi

Czech Republic

Turkey

Canada

Denmark

Uganda

Canada

Ukraine

Chile

Dominican Republic

Iraq

United Kingdom

China (Hong Kong)

Uruguay Uzebekistan

Chinese Taiwan

Israel

USAUSA

Colombia

Italy

Zambia

Cook Islands

Zimbabwe

Poland Portugal Puerto RicoPhilippinesPalau Palestine Panama Paraguay

Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sweden SwitzerlandSeychelles

Norway

Indonesia Ireland

Latvia

North Macedonia

Madagascar

Belarus Belgium Belgium Belize Bhutan Bolivia

Côte d’Ivoire

Ethiopia

Hungary

Liechtenstein

Mauritius Mexico Montenegro Morocco Myanmar Nepal NetherlandsMalta Mauritania New Caledonia

Lithuania Luxembourg

Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait

India

Faroe Islands

Fiji Finland France French Polynesia

Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece

Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia

Botswana

Falkland Islands (Malvinas)

Iceland

JordanJapan

Lebanon Liberia

Malawi Malaysia

NigeriaNew Zealand

Saudi Arabia Serbia

Romania Syria

Together we are BirdLife International Partnership for nature and people

www.birdlife.org

BirdLife International is the world’s largest nature conservation partnership.Through our unique local-to-global approach, we deliver high impact

and long term conservation for the benefit of nature and people

3JUL-SEP 2020 • BIRDLIFE

There’s still very much an ‘us and them’ attitude when it comes to humans and nature. For many, nature has a sense of ‘otherness’ – something they can go and enjoy in a park, or a garden, but ultimately something very detached from their actual lives. But ultimately, we are animals, so we are nature too, and our collective negligence of our planet’s health is proving fatal not just to what we consider the ‘natural world’, but to us, too. Millions of humans die every year as a result of environmental harm. Not in the future, not in 2030, but in the here and now. Reconnecting that link in people’s hearts and minds is one of the long-term goals of our One Planet, One Right campaign.

Our coverage begins on page 10. But our commitment to advancing the conversation goes beyond the pages of this magazine. Our ongoing Green Recovery Webinar series plays to BirdLife’s strength as a convener, bringing together thought leaders across governments, business and youth movements for a series of daring discussions on the future of our planet. Why not head to youtube.com/user/BirdLifeVideo to catch up on what you’ve missed?

Alex Dale, Editor

Our campaign has already garnered considerable support, not least from Dr David Boyd – the UN’s

Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. On page 14, he speaks to BirdLife

on the challenges that lie ahead – and how we can overcome them.

DAVID BOYD PHILIPPE SANDS YANN ROUXELOur One Planet campaign has had valuable input

and support from Professor Philippe Sands, a prominent international human rights barrister.

Philippe shares his thoughts on a natural healthy environment as a human right, and our planet’s

prospects, on page 22.

Changing gears, we once again turn our attention to BirdLife’s Marine team, who routinely deliver

innovative and resourceful solutions to the issues birds face at sea. Yann, our Seabird Bycatch Project Coordinator, reports on one of their

strangest looking inventions to date on page 44.

ONE PLANET. ONE RIGHT. ONE VISION

CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

EDITORIAL

P.28HOW ARE

WE TACKLING THE THREAT OF

ILLEGAL BIRD TRADE IN ASIA?

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CONTENTS

BIRDLIFE • JUL-SEP 2020

CONTRIBUTORS: Rachel Gartner, Justine Guiny, Jeremy Herry, Jessica Law, James Lowen, Mireia Peris, Christopher Sands, Cressida Stevens,

Kate Tointon

SCIENCE CONSULTANTS Tris Allinson, Chris Bowden, Ian Burfield, Stuart Butchart, Mike Crosby, Richard Grimmett, Melanie Heath, Anuj Jain,

Noelle Kumpel, Jenny Lau, Roger Safford, Katie Sims, Wim Van den Bossche

FRONT COVER via HEX Digital – hexdigital.com

EDITOR Alex Dale [email protected] EDITOR Shaun Hurrell

The views expressed are those of the contributorsand not necessarily those of BirdLife International.

ART EDITOR Richard HoodPrinted by On Demand Print Services LtdPrinted on processed chlorine-free paper made from at least 80% post-consumer waste recycled fibre.

To advertise in BIRDLIFE please contact Jim Lawrence,Mobile: +44(0) 7831 187 057Email: [email protected]

To subscribe to BIRDLIFE please email [email protected]

BIRDLIFE is available by subscription from BirdLife Internationalat the above address and from some Partner organisations.

JUL-SEP 2020NUMBER 2VOLUME 42ISSN 2519-4658

The production of BIRDLIFE is generously supported by the A. G. Leventis Foundation.

OFFICERS OF BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONALPresident Emeritus Her Majesty Queen Noor of JordanHonorary President Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado of JapanHonorary Vice-Presidents Baroness Young of Old Scone (UK), Gerard A Bertrand (USA), A. P. Leventis (UK), Ben Olewine IV and Peter Johan ScheiChief Executive Patricia Zurita, Chairman Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias Treasurer Nick Prentice

COUNCIL OF BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONALAfrica Achilles Byaruhanga (Uganda), Claudia Feltrup-Azafzaf (Tunisia) and Mark Anderson (South Africa), Asia Sarath Wimalabandara Kotagama (Sri Lanka) and Shawn Lum (Singapore), Americas David O’Neill (USA), Rosabel Miró (Panama) and Alberto Yanosky (Paraguay), Europe Gergő Halmos (Hungary), Vera Voronova (Kazakhstan) and Philippe Funcken (Belgium), Middle East Yehya Khaled (Jordan) and Assad Adel Serhal (Lebanon), Pacific Kevin Hague (New Zealand) and Paul Sullivan (Australia)

GLOBAL ADVISORY GROUP TO THE CHIEF EXECUTIVEChair Susan Orr, Former Chair Wendy Paulson, John S. Adams, Jane Alexander, Geoff Ball, Nathalie Boulle, Nick Butcher, Appy Chandler, Christie Constantine, Sean Dennis, Scott Dresser, Joe Ellis, Warren Evans, John Gregory, Daniel Gauthier, Piyush Gupta, Richard Hale, Pamela Isdell, James Kushlan, Tasso Leventis, Hector Morales, Ben Olewine, Nick Prentice, Deb Rivel, Terry Townshend, Kurt Vogt, Barbara Young

BIRDLIFE is published quarterly by BirdLife International, The David Attenborough Building, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ, UKTel. +44 (0)1223 277318 | Fax +44 (0)1223 277200 | Email [email protected] | UK registered charity n. 1042125BirdLife International is a worldwide partnership of conservation organisations working to protect the world’s birds and their habitats.

SHARE THE LOVE

Give the gift of birds with a yearly subscription toBirdLife: The Magazine.

Delivering the latest conservation breakthroughs,discoveries and insights, straight from the field to your door,

it’s the perfect gift for the bird lover in your life.

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REGULARS

6 AROUND THE PARTNERSHIP

The latest news from every region

8 ONE TO WATCH

Greater Prairie-chicken

60 BCI

The latests from our Bird Conservation International science

journal

62 SCIENCE SPOTLIGHT

How pet owners are key to makingthe parrot trade sustainable

Anuj Jain

COVER STORY

10 ONE PLANET ONE RIGHT

Let's make it a human right to live on a healthy planet

Shaun Hurrell


The power of human rights – an interview with Dr David Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights

and the EnvironmentChristopher Sands


The only recovery is a green recovery – the latest on the EU Green Deal

Justine Guiny and Jeremy Herry


Environmental destruction – a crime against humanity? We get

an international human rights barrister's perspective

Christopher Sands


Our letter to the United Nations in full

FEATURES

26 PARTNERSHIP

ABC join the flockAlex Dale

28 ASIA BIRD TRADE

Safety in numbers – how we're protecting the Helmeted Hornbill

Cressida Stevens

32 ASIA BIRD TRADE

At home with the Hornbills – a lighter look at the fascinating

ecology of the Helmeted Hornbill

36 ASIA BIRD TRADE

The last song? An update on the Asian songbird crisis

James Lowen

40 FORESTS

What's your next move? What videogames can teach us about

landscape conservationCressida Stevens

44 MARINE

Lifebuoys for birds – the latest innovation from our Marine team

Yann Rouxel

46 IRREPLACEABLE

Mountain rescue – how we're empowering local citizens to protect

and restore Mount KenyaLewis Kihumba

48 NATURE & PEOPLE

Birds are colour blind - our staff react to recent events and the first

#BlackBirdersWeek

52 CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

From three fledglings to a thousand - the remarkable comeback story of

the Grey-breasted ParakeetKate Tointon

54 PREVENTING EXTINCTIONS

A new hope for vulturesRachel Gartner

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6 BIRDLIFE • JUL-SEP 2020

NEWS ROUND-UP

A R O U N D T H E

PA R T N E R S H I PALL THE LATEST NEWS, INSIGHT AND SUCCESS STORIES

FROM 116 PARTNERS IN 113 COUNTRIES

EUROPEDecades of hard work advocating against the

construction of Biscarrués dam have paid off for our Spanish Partner, SEO. The planned dam and reservoir would have destroyed thousands of hectares of habitat (including protected Natura 2000 sites), harming important biodiversity and disrupting the nature-based economy of Gallego. After a long legal battle, rising to the Supreme Court, the project was rejected for being in violation of EU law. Victory!

AMERICASGuyra Paraguay has created a pioneering virtual tour

of its Paraguayan Pantanal Reserve within the Avenza Maps mobile app. The reserve’s outstanding biodiversity makes it a popular ecotourism destination. Now, people can wander the trails through this paradise, exploring points of interest on their phones. This will not only enhance the experience for visitors, but has given people a way to connect with nature whilst reserves have been closed.

KEY BIRDLIFE PARTNER

BIRDLIFE COUNTRY PROGRAMME

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AFRICAGhana Wildlife Society (GWS) has developed a

position statement on renewable energy developments, which builds from lessons learned by other BirdLife Partners in Africa and Europe. GWS supports Ghana’s transition to more renewable energy sources, but highlights that “it is of utmost urgency to address and minimize the threat to birds from electrocution, collision and loss of important habitats due to electricity generation, transmission and distribution”, and continues to engage stakeholders in the sector.


B I R D B U L L E T I N

CEPF EASTERN AFROMONTANE PROJECT WRAPS UPAfter eight fruitful years, CEPF’s investment in the Eastern Afromontane hotspot (a project implemented by BirdLife International) has come to an end. Stretching from Zimbabwe in southern Africa to Yemen in the Middle East, this vast area provides tens of millions of people with fresh water. However, with the majority of the hotspot’s nations caught in the clutches of poverty, wildlife suffers from habitat destruction resulting from unsustainable use of natural resources as a means to survive. Therefore, much of the work has involved helping communities living in or around Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) to develop livelihoods that are both substantial and sustainable. Over the course of the investment, the hotspot has seen 164 projects led by 115 organisations supported, across 83 KBAs. The successes have been considerable, including helping to secure 1.4 million hectares of protected areas, discovering six species new to science, and contributing to the much-celebrated downlisting of the Mountain Gorilla Gorilla beringei beringei from Critically Endangered to Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Crucially, the hotspot is now better equipped with a whole host of experienced organisations ready to continue creating change for conservation.

ASIACrucial habitats for wildlife and ecotourism in India

have been devastated by a major gas leak and blowout at the Baghjan oil field in the north-eastern state of Assam. The blaze has severely damaged two nearby KBAs (Maguri-Motapung wetlands and areas of Dibru-Saikhowa National Park) and polluted the tributaries of the Brahmaputra River. Wildlife casualties include the Ganges River Dolphin and thousands of dead fish and waterbirds. “Preliminary surveys by our team shows that large patches of grassland have turned to ash”, say BNHS (BirdLife in India).

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PACIFICIn our last issue, we documented some of the

birds ‘worst hit’ by the Australian bushfires, amongst which was the Endangered population of Glossy Black-cockatoos on Kangaroo Island. Conservationists at BirdLife Australia have therefore been overjoyed to find at least 23 cockatoo chicks in nests of trees that managed to withstand the inferno. They now strive to keep these chicks safe against the persistent threat of predation by possums.

MIDDLE EASTA landmark agreement will make Egyptian

skies safer. Signed in April between the Migratory Soaring Birds project (MSB; run by BirdLife), Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency, and Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), it will ensure that migratory birds and wider biodiversity are considered in EETC’s wind energy and powerline plans. The MSB project and Nature Conservation Egypt have also been globally recognised for such effective mainstreaming work in Egypt by winning the prestigious 2020 Energy Globe Award.

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ONE TO WATCH

Imagine you’re walking across the North American prairies when you hear a haunting, resonant wailing sound echoing across the plains. You could be forgiven for mistaking it for a wolf’s howl, human singing, or even a musical instrument. Follow the sound towards an elevated stretch of short grass, however, and you’ll see that its true source is even more improbable: large, grouse-like birds squaring off against each other, raising twin crests like rabbits’ ears, and inflating sacs the colour and shape of tangerines on either side of their necks – the source of the unearthly “booming” sound they use to attract females. Today, an encounter with a Greater Prairie-chicken Tympanuchus cupido (Vulnerable) is a rare and extraordinary experience. The species used to be a common sight across North America and Canada, numbering in the millions in the 1830s in the state of Illinois alone. But by the 1930s, this flamboyant member of the grouse family was teetering on the brink of extinction.

During the space of a single century, vast swathes of prairie habitat had been swallowed up by farmland, and the species was drastically over-hunted for sport, leaving it hemmed into just a few small patches of managed grassland

in the midwestern USA. Such a dramatic drop in numbers meant a great deal of genetic diversity was lost, further reducing the birds’ health and breeding success. The species is also a victim of more indirect impacts stemming from hunting: the non-native Common Pheasant Phasianus colchicus, introduced for shooting, competes with the Greater Prairie-chicken for food and habitat. They even lay their eggs in the prairie-chickens’ nests. The pheasant’s chicks hatch first and leave the nest after just a few hours, causing the prairie-chicken to believe she has successfully raised her young, and abandon her own, unhatched eggs.

Despite this bleak outlook, the results of the North American Breeding Bird Survey suggest its population might now be slowly increasing, although this trend varies region by region. This heartening change of fortune may be a result of the conservation action underway to safeguard the species. Protected areas and limits on livestock grazing are allowing the prairie to spring up again, and conservationists have tried translocating birds to reduce inbreeding. This, combined with stricter hunting legislation, could mean this species won’t have to play chicken with extinction.

Playing chicken with extinction

GREATER PRAIRIE-CHICKEN Tympanuchus cupido Photo Rob Palmer Photography/Shutterstock

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FEATURE


ONE PLANET ONE RIGHT





t’s no secret: our natural world is in terrible shape. Our unsustainable system is causing climate chaos, mass extinction of

species, pollution and human suffering.As COVID-19 reminds us, the destruction

of nature harms people directly. Lest we forget, we are part of nature, and we need a healthy planet to survive together. We, as do all other living beings, deserve the right to a healthy natural world.

Society must build back better after this crisis; governments cannot continue business as usual. We now need a Green Recovery that recognises the importance of nature, that tackles the climate and biodiversity crises simultaneously, and kick-starts adecade of systemic change that builds resilient economies, healthy communities

and a thriving natural world.We must completely change the way we

treat our home. Human rights movements have a long and successful track record at transforming society and, with governments meeting in September to discuss the fate of our planet at key UN meetings, there has never been a greater need for action.

We call on the UN to add the right to a healthy natural environment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Just as the original Declaration was forged from the ashes of humanity’s last global crisis, World War II, we can emerge from today’s crisis with a symbolic and decisive political change. One that shows to the world that our solutions are in nature, and that systemic change must happen, fast. It’s an ambitious goal, but an achievable one, and here’s how…

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BIG CHALLENGES REQUIRE BIG SOLUTIONS. OUR MOST AMBITIOUS CAMPAIGN EVER AIMS TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM HUMANITY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE – FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL





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FEATURE


hat exactly do we want, and when?A universal human right to a healthy natural environment,

guaranteed by public policies and determined by sustainability, science, and traditional indigenous knowledge. We call on the UN to:n Vote to include the right to a

healthy natural environment at the UN Human Rights Council, in the UN General Assembly and as an urgent topic at the UN Summit on Biodiversity in September 2020.

n Ultimately include the right to a healthy natural environment in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by December 2023 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration by the UN General Assembly.

Why a human right?We’re used to talking about saving species and ecosystems, but the

twin biodiversity and climate crises facing our planet already violate and jeopardise our human rights. Because of environmental harms, over nine million people die prematurely every year and hundreds of millions of people suffer illnesses. Climate change impacts – more frequent and intense storms, droughts, wildfires and rising sea levels – threaten the health, well-being and dignity of billions of people. Michele Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,warns: “the world has never seen a human rights threat of this scope.” It’s high time the world’s governments woke up to the gravity of the situation and acted accordingly.

Rights-based approaches have a strong history of catalysing change – such as the campaign to abolish slavery, the women’s rights movement, and the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples.

What will it achieve in practice?A new human right is far from just a symbolic gesture. Once a human

right is ratified through the UN policy machinery, it’s an immense catalyst for international and national legal change as member states improve their environmental policies to fulfil the right, which would see sweeping improvements to wildlife, ecosystems and the lives of people. It would also make additional resources available to assist developing countries in protecting the environment, and support environmental human rights defenders.

Why are we focusing on humans?Human society is pulling itself from the web of life, and breaking strands: we’re losing our connection to the natural world at the same time as we are devastating it. Yet humans are nature; what protects nature, protects humans. So we approach this campaign with a deep recognition that supporting nature’s rights is supporting human rights, and environmental rights defenders are de facto human rights defenders. As such, this anthropogenic

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WE HAVE ONE PLANETFor nature. For us. We need a human right to ensure the planet’s health, and our future

All photos via Unsplash


standpoint also completely supports, and is compatible with, an ecocentric viewpoint, including movements to protect inherent rights of nature (such as the Whanganui River in New Zealand, now legally treated as a living entity).

With the current gaps in national and international law, a human rights approach has the largest potential for the global, systemic change needed to protect life on Earth. The COVID-19 response has also shown that change can happen fast, when there is the political will, and when humans are in immediate danger, compared to the slow response to climate and biodiversity crises where threats may seem far off to some.

What’s the wider context?This umbrella campaign forms part of a wider push to transform international climate and nature policy at the beginning of the UN Decade of Action, including adopting a Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, a Green Recovery from COVID-

16% OF GLOBAL DEATHS Pollution is responsible for 3X as many deaths as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined, and for nearly 15X as many deaths as war and violence

80% OF UN STATES have already established some legal recognition of the right to a healthy environment, yet the UN does not yet recognise this as a universal human right

OVER 1 MILLION SPECIES at risk of extinction globally

19, tackling illegal wildlife trade, reforming agricultural policy, reversing deforestation, and more. Through calling for a universal right to healthy nature, the campaign also aims to ensure that everyone, from all walks of life and all areas of the world, is able to access and benefit from nature. One Planet One Right is also an open call to the rest of the world’s civil society for support; the inclusion of the right to a healthy natural environment is a push we should all be behind if we are to ensure our survival and wellbeing, and save our planet.

What should I do next?Spread the word, quickly! Sign and share the petition to make it a UN-recognised human right to live on a healthy planet. It may seem overwhelming, but it’s true: to emerge from these crises, to ensure our future and that of the planet, we need to entirely transform humanity’s relationship with nature. This human right helps make that happen.


THE POWER OF HUMAN R IGHTS

he question has been on the lips of commentators all around the globe: if the world can mobilise so rapidly to respond to COVID-19, why can’t

it do so for the even more serious looming threat of climate change?

For Boyd, the discrepancy in action comes as little surprise, and is rooted in inequality. “COVID-19 threatens everyone, including wealthy and powerful people in the global north”, he says. “On the other hand, the effects of climate change are being felt right now by people who don’t have much of a voice and are on the sort of outskirts of the people who run

the globe.”This inequality is at the heart of the

challenge of Boyd’s role as the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. His job, as he sees it, is to amplify the voices of scientists who are saying, yes, there clearly is a connection between the destruction of our planet, and the wildfires, cyclones and pandemics that are hitting communities the world over. In this exclusive two-part interview, Boyd gives his insight into why nature is a human right, and how we can make it happen…

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Dr David Boyd, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, and a supporter of our campaign, speaks to BirdLife on why nature is a human right, the process required to make it so, and whether this ambitious goal is even feasible…

pecial rapporteurs are individual human rights experts that are appointed by the UN Human Rights

Council to work on specific human rights topics. Our work basically consists of an annual report to the Human Rights Council on a given subject, an annual report to the UN General Assembly on a given subject, and responding to citizens and civil society around the world about instances where they allege that their rights are being violated by states or by governments.

I’m the special rapporteur on the human rights obligations related to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. You’ll notice they don’t actually talk about the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. So I perceive my job as the UN Special Rapporteur as having three main elements. One is to achieve, for the first time, global recognition that every single person on this planet, no matter where they live, no matter what colour of their skin, no matter rich or poor, has this right to live in a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable

Senvironment.

People have been working on this for decades. And because we are now clearly in an unprecedented planetary environmental emergency, I feel like now is the time to actually put this right into action. So job number one, get it recognised. Number two, clarify what it means. And number three, accelerate the implementation of actions to fulfil this right across the planet.

DAVID BOYD ON... What, exactly, is a UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights & the Environment?

NOT TOO LATE“I think that if we can act fast enough to make this mess so quickly, then we can act fast enough to turn it around quickly”, says Boyd on the scale of the challenge ahead. “With our billions of people, we have an unprecedented reservoir of human ingenuity, creativity and innovation at our disposal if we can harness that in the direction which we need to move in.”



o pretty much everyone I talk to when I ask: “Do you think that you have the right to live in a healthy and

sustainable environment?” They go, yeah, of course.

But do they actually know what that means? Generally, no. So I’m producing a series of six reports for the UN on what I called the substantive elements of the right to a healthy and sustainable environment. The first one was on clean air. I mean, what could be more critical to human survival and wellbeing than being able to breathe clean air?

A safe climate was my second report. The report I’m working on right now is on healthy ecosystems and biodiversity as the third key element of the right to a healthy environment. And nothing

has driven that home to people more clearly than the COVID-19 pandemic, which has its roots in our dysfunctional relationship with the natural world. Whether that’s through deforestation, industrial agriculture or the wildlife trade, ecosystem degradation is causing a surge in emerging infectious diseases that leap from wildlife into humans. The remaining three reports that I’ll be rolling out over the next couple of years

S

DAVID BOYD ON... What his role entails

will deal with healthy and sustainably produced food, access to clean water and adequate sanitation, and non-toxic environments in which people can live, work, study and play. So once I’ve completed that series of six reports, hopefully everyone will have a better sense of what the right to a healthy environment actually means.

“What could be more critical to human survival and wellbeing than being able to breathe clean air?”

A RICH ROLE MODEL“I love to tell the story of Costa Rica”, says Boyd. “Costa Rica put the right to a healthy environment in its constitution in 1994. They have become one of the greenest countries on earth. Twenty five percent of the land of Costa Rica is now in national parks. They’ve got 98% of their electricity coming from renewable energy sources. They have a plan for 2050 for the complete decarbonisation of their economy.”

Arenal Volcano, Costa RicaPhoto via Shutterstock

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THE INTERVIEW


he process is kind of a two step process. Countries pushing the initiative forward envision that first

they’ll go to the UN’s Human Rights Council and pass a resolution there that recognises the right. And then they’ll bump it from there to the United Nations General Assembly.

The theory of change is that once you have a United Nations resolution that ideally is supported by all of the countries of the world, it serves as a catalyst for change throughout the entire international and national legal systems. So you would see changes at the national level in terms of more countries putting the right to a

healthy natural environment into their constitutions. You would see countries strengthening their environmental laws to ensure that they’re able to actually fulfil this right.

If we look back, we can see this is exactly what happened ten years ago after a long standing effort by civil society around the world. The United Nations recognised for the first time that there is a human right to clean water and to adequate sanitation. We’ve seen this decade that more countries are putting the rights to water and sanitation into their constitutions, and the practical concrete outcome is that we’ve seen literally hundreds of millions of people gain access to safe

Tdrinking water and sanitation. These are things that folks in the world’s wealthiest countries just take for granted. Until you’ve met someone who actually spends two, four, six hours a day walking to a distant pump or creek to get water and carrying it physically on their head or on the back of a bicycle, you can’t understand how transformative it is to have a well in your community, to bring water to your home.

And this is where the power of human rights really lies as it takes something like clean water from being something that governments just think about as an option, to something they must implement.

DAVID BOYD ON... The process to get a human right recognised by the United Nations

Karakal, TajikistanPhoto Milosz Maslanka WATER AS A HUMAN RIGHT

Access to clean water remains challenging globally – in Africa and Asia, women have to walk an average of six kilometres to collect water. In Tajikistan, pictured, the UN estimates nearly a third of the population takes water from canals and irrigation ditches, both of which are often polluted. Recognising water as a human right has helped galvanise governments into action.



e have some great evidence that proves the right makes a difference. And that evidence is the fact that

today over 80 percent of the countries of the world already recognise the right to a healthy environment in law, either in their constitutions, their legislation, through court decisions or through regional treaties that they are parties to.

Academic researchers have studied the implications of this, of the recognition of this right, and they have discovered that it does make a difference. They’ve discovered that countries that recognise the right to a healthy environment have reduced

air pollution faster, saving lives in the process. They have reduced greenhouse gas emissions much more quickly than countries that don’t recognise the right.

They have achieved access to safe drinking water and sanitation more quickly than countries that don’t recognise the right and perform better on many other broad metrics of environmental performance.

I could bend your ear all day with stories from countries around the world where the recognition of this right has led to all kinds of amazing changes, stories from Costa Rica, from Norway, from Namibia, you name it.

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DAVID BOYD ON... Whether there is global momentum for this movement

The right to a healthy planet, as a universally recognized

human right, would be a powerful addition to the toolkit for saving the planet. The right to a healthy environment already provides the foundation for much of the progress we are seeing in different nations around the globe. What we need to do now is seize this moment of global eco-crisis to secure United Nations recognition of this right so that everyone, everywhere benefits. The human right to a healthy planet, if recognized by all nations, could be the most important human right of the 21st century.

This is why I wholeheartedly endorse the #1Planet1Right campaign.

DAVID BOYD

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THE INTERVIEW


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here’s actually two elements of the answer to that question. Some of the world’s most powerful

countries, some of the world’s most polluting countries, do not recognise this right. So the United States, China, Japan, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom are [examples of] countries that do not recognise the right. It’s an interesting situation where this initiative is being led by smaller countries and countries in the global south where they’re saying, wait a minute, we’re fed up with you guys not recognising that

your actions are affecting our rights to a healthy planet.

Another thing, which is important is to be clear on, is that despite the fact that 80 percent of UN countries recognise this right in one way or another, in some countries, the actual legal recognition is weak.

And that’s an impediment to its implementation. There are also literally dozens of countries, and I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone, that are either embroiled in civil war, are facing extreme poverty, or are being run by authoritarian dictators. And in

Tin this subset of countries where the rule of law really doesn’t exist or is extremely weak, the right to a healthy environment is just words on paper, just as all human rights in those countries are just words on paper.

And really, for countries in that category, they need to become functioning countries before they can really begin to address these human rights issues.

DAVID BOYD ON... Why, if this right is present in some fashion in 80% of the countries of the world, we’re hurtling towards planetary catastrophe

A SUFFOCATING CRISISThe United Nations Environment Programme does not mince its word when talking about the impact of air pollution: they have declared it the biggest environmental health risk of our time. Aside from its contribution to climate change, air pollution in its many forms – from industrial furnances to wildfires to cookstoves – is responsible for millions of deaths every year.

The majority of the world’s most polluted cities are in AsiaPhoto Hung Chung Chih



he COVID-19 pandemic has already had a huge impact on our lives, and will undoubtedly continue to do so in the years and decades to come. Its

consequences are devastating and go beyond the hundreds of thousands of people that have sadly died. Millions more are out of work and have no money to spend. Our economies are not only on hold - some sectors are collapsing completely.

Our economic model has reached its limits. Constant demands for growth enabled by a free market which ignores

sustainability and the planet’s limited resources no longer seem fit for purpose. By overexploiting nature, our production, consumption and trading model has proven to be one of the very roots of the spread of the virus. And these same roots drive the twin climate and biodiversity crises which threaten our very existence on this planet.

With this alarming wake-up call, human societies around the world are

now facing the negative consequences of our unsustainable development model.

This crisis is teaching us that our economy is entirely dependent on nature, and that we


As businesses wake from hibernation and the world eases itself into something close to normal, global attention turns to economic recovery – but ignoring nature as part of these

plans would be a huge error. Will the EU’s response be fit for purpose?

Justine Guiny and Jeremy Herry

THE ONLY RECOVERY IS A GREEN

RECOVERYT

must listen to what the science tells us if we want a sustainable future.

In the same way the United Nations and the European Union emerged from the ashes of World War II, we must take stock of what we have learned from this crisis to build a better, sustainable future. While many are mobilising colossal sums in an attempt to jump-start the economy back to business as usual, citizen movements, businesses, some governments and NGOs worldwide are calling that the post-COVID-19 recovery has to be green.

What does that mean? It means making sure that the money used to recover from the COVID-19 crisis helps prevent another one: the impending climate and biodiversity crisis. In Europe, over 1.6 million citizens and 150 environmental NGOs have called on the European Union to restart its economy by launching the biggest green investment plan the world has ever seen.

Large cross-sector initiatives such as ‘The Great Reset’ led by the World Economic ‘Forum, or the ‘Green Alliance’ (gathering over 200 stakeholders, from BirdLife to the French Government), are also demanding sustainable financial investments.

Across the map, the BirdLife Partnership has been advocating for our leaders to seize this opportunity to deliver green, structural change in our economies. The truth is, our planet already provides us with the tools we need to combine the best of both worlds: investing in restoring and protecting ecosystems can provide people with immediate sustainable jobs and long-lasting natural benefits. For instance, rebuilding oyster reefs and fish passages in coastal dams can boost economic activity in sectors such as marine construction and tourism, while increasing fish populations,

improving water quality and recovering threatened ecosystems. The European Commission has also demonstrated that political power can reshape our societies by quickly unlocking huge sums of money. This has led them to set up a recovery fund of €750 billion.

European politicians have been spreading the idea that Member States would need to follow the “Do no harm” principle when implementing the recovery fund, in line with the EU’s commitments under the EU Green Deal and the recently adopted Biodiversity Strategy. Sounds good, but the devil is in the details…

In fact, the EU’s money focuses on stimulus packages for sectors such as green transport and sustainable energy, but biodiversity and ecosystems are nowhere to be seen. They even provided €24 billion to an unreformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), despite a recent report from the EU Court of Auditors demonstrating how harmful it is for biodiversity. The Commission has also failed to clarify how it will bridge the assessed €470 billion gap in annual investment to meet its 2030 climate and energy goals. Moreover, the LIFE programme, the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate action, is also under threat: the Commission wants to slash its funding by €15 million.

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, a green recovery is not some nice little bonus. It’s what we desperately need. The EU and its Member States know what the science says. We have told them time and again. They now have to act upon that knowledge - our collective survival depends on it.

1 Last year, six HeidelbergCement quarries across Europe and Africa hosted Spring Alive events, such as this one in Poland

4 Ecosystems already provide us with the tools to live prosperous, sustainable livesAll photos BirdLife Europe & Central Asia

0 While birds are central to our mission, our core vision speaks to our holistic outlook: “a world where nature and people live in harmony, more equitably and sustainably”.



THE EU’S MONEY FOCUSES ON STIMULUS PACKAGES FOR SECTORS SUCH AS GREEN TRANSPORT AND SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, BUT BIODIVERSITY AND ECOSYSTEMS ARE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN

An international human rights barrister’s perspective on the origins of the right to a healthy natural environment, and why we must act now

rofessor Philippe Sands has unique prominence in the field of human rights and the environment. His illustrious career has seen him

appear as counsel and advocate in many international courts and tribunals, ranging from maritime boundary disputes, to pollution, whaling, and to genocide. He has also published 17 books on international law including Lawless World, which catalysed public debate on the Iraq War. His latest, The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive, follows the success of East West Street, which explores the creation and

development of the world-changing legal concepts of ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’. Co-founder of the Centre for International Environmental Law, Sands is also the author of two seminal texts in the field.

BirdLife is especially gratified to have Sands’ support and advice for the One Planet One Right campaign to add the right to a healthy natural environment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here we get an insight into his work, his measure of success and optimism, and why, when it comes to the environment, international law is too important to be left to international lawyers.

P

A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY?

ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION

universal human right to a healthy natural environment – it’s almost unbelievable that it

doesn’t already exist. The concept of human rights is ever-expanding (e.g. the rights of women, ethnic minorities/majorities, LGBTQ+); are you optimistic of the inclusion of the environment?The world of human rights that I am involved in is in the very earliest stages of its development. If you go back through human existence, you’re talking about millennia. It’s really only in the past 60 or 70 years we see the idea that law at the global level might protect the wellbeing of the environment, the wellbeing of individuals and the wellbeing of communities. The world is not going to change overnight, human rights are not going to be completely protected overnight, the environment is not going to be completely protected overnight.

Are the prospects for the planet gloomy, then?It’s a long game, so I’m not looking for overnight change. What keeps me going are the little indicators of success: an odd case here, an odd case there, a judgement of a court in one part of the world, a judgement of the International Court of Justice in another. I believe that it is possible to change consciousness and that the law contributes to that – this explains why I am able to be relatively optimistic.

I think the world is a better place than it was in the 1930s. Then, a country could kill half of its own citizens without violating a single rule of international law. That can’t happen anymore. It doesn’t mean that the killings stop, it doesn’t mean that the plunder of the environment stops, but it does mean that there’s an emerging standard which says actually you’re not allowed to do that – and that’s a good thing.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the related concepts of international crimes against humanity and genocide, came out of the ashes of the Second World War, as outlined in your book East West Street. Does the right to a healthy natural environment have its place in this context?Considering great environmental destruction or outrages as international crimes might well be appropriate – there is no innate contradiction or flaw in raising environmental crimes to that level given their consequences. The development of universal human rights only stems from the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, and our environmental consciousness, law and rights are even more recent – dating from the ‘70s – so this is all still in its infancy and is incremental. There have been small (but important) steps taken – but they do make a difference and give me optimism.

A

Are these steps moving with enough urgency to secure the planet’s health?With regards to the environment and climate, and whether enough changes will be made in enough time before a point of no return has been reached – that’s something I do not know. Real changes happen in international law when catastrophe strikes. Nothing may really happen on climate change, and it may well be too late, until catastrophe strikes – that is when the law reallycuts in.

The history of international cooperation is the history of disaster followed by reconstruction, and I’ve long thought that in the environmental field it is the imminence of collapse that causes action to be taken. On climate change it just hasn’t got bad enough and the risk is that by the time it does, it will be too late.

So recognising a human right to a healthy environment could be a key tool in an effective response to the twin crises of climate and biodiversity loss. International law is too important to be left to international lawyers – mobilising the public to support this new human right is the right thing to do, a terrific thing to do, and I am happy to help.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights rose from the ashes of World War

II and the Nuremberg trials (pictured)Photo United States Holocaust

Memorial Museum

“The history of international cooperation is the history of disaster followed by reconstruction”



24


OUR OPEN

LETTER TO THE UNITED

NATIONSThe #1Planet1Right campaign was

kicked-off with this letter to the UN Secretary-General

on 22 April 2020

To His Excellency Mr António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations

Today, on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, as if the earth’s incessant rotation had slowed and stopped, coronavirus has created an unprecedented challenge. It connects us all in our fragility and the intimate connection we have with our planet and with nature.

Whether confined at home or struggling to be distanced from each other in other ways, or heroically treating the ill and dying, or continuing to provide essential public services, all at personal peril – we all ask how have we come to this?

That is why, at this epochal moment in human history, we need your leadership at the helm of our United Nations. The health of our planet, our ecosystems, our economies, indeed ourselves, cry out now for the General Assembly to recognize our universal right to live in a healthy natural environment – guaranteed by public policies and governed by sustainability and the best scientific and traditional indigenous knowledge.

We invite you – we implore you – to call for an addition to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: to enshrine a new article 31, one that recognises the right to a healthy environment. Starting now, by putting it on the agenda of the UN General Assembly meeting in September as part of the Summit on Biodiversity, this could be achieved by December 2023, to mark the 75th anniversary of the adoption by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration.

We know that we will eventually, in grief and pain, and economically devastated, emerge from coronavirus. Once we reach the brink of the galloping twin crises of climate and biodiversity, however, we will not escape. We can already see how our lack of care for the planet infringes other established universal human rights, such as the right to life, liberty and security.

The science is clear now. In this critical “Decade of Action”, we must take the necessary decisive actions to save the ecosystems of the planet from collapse. The effects of global warming, and the loss of biodiversity on people’s health and their economies, if left unaddressed, will be irreparable.

The initial declaration of human rights was forged out of the ashes of the conflagration of the Second World War. Now we too must we rise to the challenge of finding a better way to conduct ourselves on our spinning home. The inspiring and determined Greta Thunberg, and the global youth movement she has pioneered, put the faces of the future viscerally on what it means to fail to secure the planet’s health. Indeed, we risk making a mockery of and undermining the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda.

We know that adding to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a profound act. Sacred even. But we are convinced that at this moment of crisis your courage and leadership is needed to address the collapse of ecosystems and the irreversible overheating of the planet which loom with such menace. Our magnificent Earth is equally sacred, and there has perhaps never been a more important moment to enshrine a human right that would oblige us all to respect it, for the benefit of all.

At BirdLife International, a family of scientists, conservationists and local people from over 100 countries, founded in 1922 shortly after the League of Nations, we believe we share this historic responsibility. As a United Nations-recognized civil society observer, we therefore humbly urge you to raise this issue at the next UN General Assembly in September.

We appreciate your urgent attention to this matter and stand ready to move forward and mobilize the planet’s citizens, across all continents, seas and oceans, to back such a vital call and support your leadership.

Yours sincerely,

Patricia ZuritaChief Executive of BirdLife International, on behalf of the BirdLife International Partnership

24

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It is time for the United

Nations to recognise the

right to a healthy natural

environment as a human

right. Our survival depends

on living on a healthy planet.

Enshrining the universal

right to a healthy

natural environment is a

fundamental step to ensure

we transform our society’s

relationship with nature.

Over a million species

are at risk of extinction.

Temperatures are soaring

like never before. And we’re

in the midst of a deadly

pandemic.

Our planet is fighting for

its life. With this right, the

human right to a healthy

natural environment, we

would put the Earth – and

ourselves – on the path

towards a global green

recovery.

ACT NOW


SIGN NOW AT WWW.1PLANET1RIGHT.ORG

SIGN OUR PETITION TO SUPPORT EFFORTS TO MAKE A HEALTHY PLANET A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT

ince it was founded in 1994, ABC has fearlessly tackled the major issues facing birds and biodiversity in the United States, including

sensitive, divisive issues such as free-roaming cats and pesticides. ABC’s reach extends beyond its country’s mainland borders; current organisational focuses include restoring habitat for Hawaiian forest endemics, and protecting key seabird colonies from threats such as invasive species.

ABC is a perfect cultural fit for the BirdLife Partnership, as a collaborative spirit is ingrained in everything they do. One of their key strategies involves working with conservation partners to establish and sustain protected reserves across the Americas, including safe havens for Araripe Manakin Antilophia bokermanni in Brazil (with partner Aquasis), and Blue-billed Curassow Crax alberti in Colombia (alongside Fundación ProAves). Overall, ABC’s network spans 15 countries and protects over a million acres – benefiting birds large and small.

“I am delighted that ABC has become a partner of BirdLife International”, says Mike Parr, President, ABC. “It will allow us to connect with like-minded groups from across the globe to help further our joint mission of bird conservation. It’s extremely exciting to be able to play a role in the next evolution of BirdLife in the Americas.”

While typically there is one BirdLife Partner per country, our constitution allows for more in special circumstances. ABC joins our long-standing Partner in the US, the National Audubon Society, which has led on bird issues since 1905. With nearly two million members, Audubon has championed hemispheric conservation, working with BirdLife partners across Latin America. “We welcome the partnership of a revitalised ABC under Mike Parr’s leadership; the challenges are so huge that we need to collectively bring all the energy we can muster to this fight to save the places birds need”, says Audubon CEO and President David Yarnold.

0 Ruby-throated Hummingbird, the species featured on ABC’s logo archilochus colubrisPhoto Steve Byland/Shutterstock


PARTNERSHIP NEWS

2

We are delighted to welcome the newest member of the BirdLife family: American Bird Conservancy (ABC), a collaborative and passionate organisation which

becomes our second Partner in the USA

Alex Dale

ABC J O I N S T H E

F L O C K

S

ELTHELEGENDSEE THE UNSEEN

BY APPOINTMENT TOHER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

SWAROVSKI OPTIKSUPPLIER OF BINOCULARS

B-02A_Birdlife_A4_EN_RWL_NEU.indd 1B-02A_Birdlife_A4_EN_RWL_NEU.indd 1 25.06.20 10:2325.06.20 10:23

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THE RED LIST


elmeted Hornbill pairs rear just one chick at a time, so ensuring its safety is paramount. And that means investing in a strong, sturdy front

door. When the female is ready to produce an egg, she seals herself inside her tree cavity nest, gluing shut the entrance with mud and fruit. Out of sight of predators, this is her safe haven: no harm can come to her and her (usually solitary) chick here. Encased inside, she waits as the male flits between fruit trees to find and bring back food. Around five months later, the time comes for the female to use her supersize bill to break free from her self-imposed prison, allowing the fledgling to take to the wing. For millenia, this technique has been effective in ensuring the survival of this species. However, as is so often the case, human action is tipping the balance against their favour. A dramatic rise in poaching means that the mother hornbill’s

H

SAFETY INN U M B E R S

Cressida Stevens

0 Helmeted Hornbill Rhinoplax vigil Penang Bird Park Photo © Tim Plowden/ www.timplowden.co.uk

haven becomes her tomb, as she waits for her next meal from a partner who will never return.

Even to get to this stage, Helmeted Hornbill pairs have to clear a big hurdle: finding a suitable nesting tree. The tree must have a cavity big enough for the adult female to raise her chick to fledge, with a ledge above that the male can perch on to drop fruit into a small opening in the nest. This sort of set-up is only found in the oldest, tallest trees of old growth forests – in other words, those that are becoming scarce since they are also the most valuable to loggers.

Food, too, is a precious resource, and the species is known to compete over access to foraging territory. Sometimes when a fig tree comes into fruit, a head-to-head battle ensues. Helmets ‘strapped’ on, the birds (usually males) charge at each other until they collide at their casques (the projections above their bills), with a deafening ‘clack’. After a series of blows, it’s

Teetering on the edge of extinction due to demand for its prized casque, the Helmeted Hornbill Rhinoplax vigil now finds itself with a fighting chance of survival thanks to bolstered law enforcement and patrols of its dwindling forest habitat


believed that the winner is entitled to the first claim on the food. But while the dwindling supply of fruit and nesting trees are two gradually increasing threats, they fail to explain why in 2015, the species made an extremely rare jump up the extinction risk ladder from Near Threatened to Critically Endangered. So what has gone wrong in the past ten years?

It comes back to that large casque on their forehead. In a twist of irony, their ‘helmet’ – a feature which in any human context is designed to protect – is their death warrant. Accounting for about 10% of the average 3kg that these massive birds weigh, and adorned by both males and females, the Helmeted Hornbill’s casque is the only one of any hornbill species that is solid, and thus highly suited to carving. Although people have been carving this material for ornamental purposes for millennia, there was no great cause for concern until 2012, when

SAFETY INN U M B E R S

ASIA BIRD TRADE

0 Helmeted Hornbill checking out a potential nest sitePhoto Sanjitpaal Singh

4 Helmeted Hornbill casts fetch up to five times more than elephant ivory in ChinaPhoto Hong Kong University Anuj

large seizures of smuggled casques revealed an explosive spike in demand. Three years later, the Helmeted Hornbill found itself one Red List category away from extinction. This is because casque carvings have become a status symbol among the rich in China – where it can sell for up to five times more than elephant ivory – though what the item says about its owner is in the eye of the beholder.

Back in the forest, poachers may trek for days in search of Helmeted Hornbills. Some mimic their characteristic ape-like laughing song in an attempt to lure them into sight. Finally, a large bird glides across the canopy with its long tail feathers streaming out behind and a silenced rifle is raised to shoot. Sometimes it’s a Helmeted Hornbill, sometimes it’s another hornbill – with such a prize to be gained, there’s no time or desire to consult the field guide. The most damaging scenario is when it’s a male provisioning for his mate and offspring during breeding season. One bird dead in the poacher’s hand, is worth two more dead in the nest.

The hotspot of poaching is in Indonesia, often orchestrated by international crime networks. It may also occur in the bordering Malaysian state of Sarawak but mercifully, there is little or no targeted poaching in the other range countries: Brunei, Myanmar and Thailand. Local communities in these countries mostly revere hornbills for their worth alive. In Myanmar, all hornbills are admired for their faithfulness (pairs form life-long bonds) and in Malaysia too, hornbills hold huge cultural significance.

WE’RE NOT ONLY PUTTING EYES AND EARS ON THE GROUND, – WE’RE PULLING WOULD-BE HUNTERS OUT OF THE CHAIN


ASIA BIRD TRADE

To survey populations and deter poachers, some BirdLife Partners have set up nest monitoring and patrol schemes with local people. For some hunters, getting involved is simply a means to make the money needed to survive. When Malaysian Nature Society (MNS, BirdLife Partner) interviewed members of local communities, one ex-poacher said: “I stopped hunting wildlife (including hornbills), because the government gave me a more lucrative alternative: being a national park ranger.” In this way, these systems act as a double defence; we’re not only putting eyes and ears on the ground, but also pulling would-be hunters out of the chain.

Others are motivated to protect the hornbills because they recognise the ecological value of the birds. Acting as key seed dispersers, the birds’ relationship with the forest is actually interdependent. One MNS Hornbill Guardian explained his motivation: “No hornbills, no forests, no us. When hornbills are healthy, forests are healthy.”

“Combating poaching directly is important but not enough to save the Helmeted Hornbill”, says Anuj Jain, Preventing Extinctions Coordinator, BirdLife Asia. “One of our key approaches is protecting the hornbill’s strongholds from habitat loss, degradation and other human disturbances, whilst improving local community livelihoods.” BirdLife is a member of the multi-organisational Helmeted Hornbill Working Group which, among other goals such as strengthening law enforcement and reducing demand, works to protect key areas where Helmeted Hornbills are found. Over the past two years, we have launched rapid field assessments from Myanmar to Borneo, and identified a number of new locations where the species is present. The next step is highlighting these areas to governments and convincing them to secure

a new kind of ‘safe haven’ – areas large enough to support hornbill populations, where threats of both poaching and forest degradation are effectively mitigated.

This also allows us to get ahead of the game. Although casque poaching does not occur in all range states, history demonstrates how readily these activities can change tack. By securing safe havens across the Helmeted Hornbill’s range, BirdLife not only addresses the issue of habitat loss, but also sets up mechanisms to protect Helmeted Hornbills before poachers begin to arrive.

Poachers entering forests, often operating through organised networks, have caused Helmeted Hornbill numbers to plummet, compounded by forest loss and their unique nesting behaviour. Creating these safe havens is essential to keep poachers out, to ensure provisioning males make it back to their nests and to keep Helmeted Hornbills out of the markets and into the only place they belong; the forests – and especially, the holes of old trees.

0 This is one helmet that sadly does not provide protection Photo © Tim Plowden/ www.timplowden.co.uk

4 Seized casques. The demand is such that it has attracted the attention of organised crime gangs Photo Bonie Dewantara

3 The species’ solid casque can be carved into intricate patterns Photo Anuj Jain

We would like to thank the BirdLife Gala Dinners, and Species Champions, Peter Smith, Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust and the National Geographic Society, for their ongoing funding and support of our work with the Helmeted Hornbill.

BirdLife’s efforts are made possible in part by its membership of the Restore Species partnership, which works to prevent extinctions caused by illegal and unsustainable trade and hunting, and poisoning.

Take your support to new heightsFor individuals who want to make a difference to bird conservation, through higher level support

Join and gain access to exclusive webinars, dinners, events and birding trips as part of our Rare Bird Club family

Contact Sarah Proud at [email protected] or +44 (0)1223 747524 to find out more

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ASIA BIRD TRADE


With a touch of comedy, India-based cartoonist Rohan Chakravarty uses his illustrations to give a view of the world through a bird’s eyes and present thought-provoking conservation messages. Explore the fascinating habits and shocking hardships of the Helmeted Hornbill

AT H O M E W I T H T H E

Hello, Helmeted Hornbill!The Critically Endangered Helmeted Hornbill of South-east Asia is a very special and unique bird!

Helmeted Hornbills use their massive casques for ariel head-butting contests, to compete for access to fruiting trees!

Helmeted Hornbills are slow breeders, producing just one chick every season. In typical hornbill fashion, the female locks herself up to protect herself and the chick, and the male delivers supplies to the family round-the-clock.

In Dayak folklore, a man who hated his mother-in-law, axed her house and laughed at her fate. He was cursed by being transformed into a Helmeted Hornbill, calling like the sound of an axe and cackling like human laughter!

HORNBILLS


Helmeted Hornbills prefer nest cavities with knob-like projections over them. This makes it easier for the male to perch atop the nest comfortably to deliver food to the female.

Helmeted Hornbills are poached heavily for their ‘helmets’, which are used to make carved relics. As the hornbill family is entirely dependent on the male hornbill, poaching the male brings doom to the entire family.

The casque of the Helmeted Hornbill is mostly solid, unlike the hollow casques of other hornbills. This makes them a poacher’s favourite.

Like other hornbills, Helmeted Hornbills too are omnivorous, but have a preference for Strangler figs. They’re amongst the most important dispersers of figs in rainforests.

ASIA BIRD TRADE


ASIA BIRD TRADE

Intricately carved hornbill casque trinkets are the latest status symbol among Chinese elite.

In addition to poaching for casques, logging, habitat loss and palm oil monoculture are growing threats to the Helmeted Hornbill.

Hornbills are ‘forest farmers’. The seeds that they disperse grow into fruit trees that feed a myriad organisms including humans, and the forests that they grow this way hold sequester huge amounts of carbon, holding the key to combating climate change.

Helmeted Hornbills are very selective of the trees they nest in, preferring only the largest and tallest trees, that are unfortunately of economic value. This makes them extremely vulnerable to logging.

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ASIA BIRD TRADE


In Java, there are now more songbirds in cages than in forests. Fierce demand for lucrative song competitions is driving multiple species to the brink – but in a region where bird-keeping is a cultural mainstay, complex solutions are required

hirty men squat on concrete outside a colourful urban café on the Indonesian island of Java. Their gaze is focused on a rainbow palate of

cages dangling from a corrugated metal roof. They listen even more intently – for inside the structures, birds are competing to get their songs heard. The onlookers are just as invested in the winner – singing competitions such as this are commonplace in Indonesian culture – with massive cash prizes at stake.

Indonesia loves its songbirds, and bird-keeping is as commonplace in much of Indonesia as keeping cats and dogs is in the west. In 2019, Manchester Metropolitan University’s Harry Marshall estimated that one in three Javan households keeps cagebirds, the collective total reaching 66–84 million – one for every two islanders. This love has in recent years manifested in singing competitions known as ‘Kicau Mania’. Tragically, however, this love is now driving many Asian passerines towards extinction, especially as the cash prizes, and thus the stakes, have escalated. The result: on Java today, more songbirds remain under lock and key, Marshall estimates, than fly freely in (what remains) of Java’s forests.

Were Java’s cagebirds exclusively captive-bred, this would be unproblematic. And indeed, many have never experienced wilderness, most obviously the non-native lovebirds Agapornis spp. and Island Canary Serinus canaria that comprise over half Java’s avian pets. But Marshall and his team also report three native species and two native genera that number over

4 White-rumped Shama Copsychus malabaricus

is prized in songbird competition circles

Photo Casey Klebba/ Wikimedia Commons

T H E L A S T S O N G

T

James Lowen


Keeping pet birds is a long-established Indonesian hobby with profound cultural roots. “But birds also offer financial gains,” observes Roger Safford, BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme Manager. “Songbird competitions are big business, providing substantial employment.” Forest poachers catch birds, which are sold via successive traders to vendors at major markets Java-wide, where serried ranks of colourful cages are crammed with birds before they reach their final owners. As songbird contests burgeon, so demand heightens. Nationwide, Ria Saryanthi, Conservation Partnership Adviser at Burung Indonesia (BirdLife Partner), estimates five million people participate: “Even small-scale events attract 50–100 contestants plus hundreds of spectators. Prize money can exceed a billion Indonesian rupiah (US $70,000),” says Saryanthi. Their birds’ vocal outpourings are judged on melody, duration and volume, and the rewards are sufficient for professionals to invest thousands of dollars in proficient songsters.

Since 2016, the practice has extended well beyond Java. “Indonesian songbird competition organisers have expanded geographically, including to the separate nation of Brunei”, says

4 Bird markets, Vietnam Photo VBN/NIS

0 Birds at market in Southern Bali , IndonesiaPhoto Peter Eastland/Alamy

a million birds in captivity – primarily extracted from the wild.

So fulsome a ‘harvest’ cannot be gathered without harm – particularly for species endemic to a country where extensive deforestation persists despite admirable government-driven reductions. Last year the recently formed IUCN Species Survival Commission Asian Songbirds in Trade Specialist Group (ASTSG) added another 16 birds to its priority list, which now numbers 44 taxa heavily impacted by songbird trade. Of these, 21 are already listed as globally threatened, of which 19 inhabit Indonesia. Nine Critically Endangered species include Javan Pied Starling Gracupica jalla whose wild population (under 50 birds) is dwarfed by the island’s captive contingent (1.1 million).

Most of these species were uplisted by BirdLife during the 2016 Red List update. The subsequent greater understanding of songbird trade has deepened concern. Two years later, Straw-headed Bulbul Pycnonotus zeylanicus was uplisted to Critically Endangered and Java Sparrow Lonchura oryzivora , a species well-recognised by bird fanciers, to Endangered in its native range. In 2019, Javan White-eye Zosterops flavus, Sumatran Leafbird Chloropsis media and Greater Green Leafbird Chloropsis sonnerati were also uplisted. “It is not that the problem has particularly worsened since 2016”, says Anuj Jain, BirdLife Asia’s Bird Trade Co-ordinator, “but rare species continue to be caught from the wild and continue to decline to the point where trends are more visible”.

SONGBIRD COMPETITIONS ARE BIG BUSINESS, PROVIDING SUBSTANTIAL EMPLOYMENT

Bird market Jakarta Photo Danumurthi

Mahendra / Flickr


ASIA BIRD TRADE

Jain. “This year COVID-19 restrictions have engendered a new brand of online songbird competitions, which anyone can join, regardless of location.” This makes competitions more accessible, and may continue after lockdown.

This all makes for a complex, culturally sensitive problem to surmount. BirdLife aims to bring illegal, unregulated and unsustainable trade in birds to an end. The adjectives are pertinent. BirdLife is not satisfied with only combating solely unlawful trade: if it threatens populations, it is unacceptable. There’s an avian welfare dimension too: among sunbirds, for example, up to half the poached individuals die in transit before reaching markets. Finally, and topically, wherever large numbers of animals and people occupy small spaces, there is an inevitable disease-transmission risk within and between groups. We still know far too little about such risks.

BirdLife is approaching the conundrum from multiple angles. “Projects typically involve understanding trappers’ roles and needs, reducing demand, enforcing laws at markets and capture sites, and rapid response when infractions are detected,” says Safford. Deciphering the drivers of trade and songbird keeping will inform Burung Indonesia’s approach to effecting behavioural change. The key transformation would be to shift contests from using wild-caught to captive-bred birds. Supported by VBN (BirdLife in the Netherlands), Burung Indonesia is encouraging select songbird-competition organisers to limit entries to captive-bred birds and is providing technical support to the government in developing bird-contest regulations.

Shifting the balance of songbirds’ provenance towards captive-bred stock may help the status of birds like starlings and bulbuls, which breed readily in captivity, but perhaps not more finicky leafbirds. Success will depend on the cost of

investment by the breeder relative to paying less for wild-caught birds” and whether enforcement serves as adequate deterrent – which presently it does not.

As Asian Songbirds in Trade Specialist Group vice-chair, Jain considers education and community engagement to be key to solving the songbird crisis. He co-chairs the community engagement group that, in his words, has managed to: “bring together different organisations and experts working with communities dependent on songbird trade to understand the drivers of demand along the supply chain, share lessons learned, as well as pilot demand-reduction approaches.”

A regional approach is increasingly important. Songbirds are traded across national borders, for example between Brunei, Kalimantan and Malaysian Sarawak. In response, BirdLife is working to strengthen regulations on international trade. CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) is an important part of the story. Although just 1.4% of traded songbirds are currently CITES-listed, Parties recently resolved to commission a study of international songbird trade to inform management and conservation priorities. Of course, there’s little benefit eradicating unsustainable trade of wild-caught birds unless their habitat is preserved. Burung Indonesia, BirdLife and Manchester Metropolitan University are conducting extensive field surveys in montane Java, identifying key locations to protect for threatened species, then working with partners to conserve them. “Within 5–10 years, Burung Indonesia would like the population of wild songbirds in native Indonesian habitat to increase and the poaching of wild songbirds to no longer constitute a significant threat”, says Saryanthi. A dawn chorus of endemic birds, singing freely in protected forests, makes for a pleasing vision indeed.

SUCCESS WILL DEPEND ON WHETHER ENFORCEMENT SERVES AS ADEQUATE DETERRENT – WHICH PRESENTLY IT DOES NOT

0 Bali Myna Leucopsar rothschildi has been trapped to near-extinction – now trappers are turning their attention to similar starling endemicsPhoto VBN/NIS

Orange-headed Thrush Geokichla citrina Photo VBN/NIS

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DON’T TRADE OUR FUTURE AWAY.The COVID-19 pandemic is a terrible but timely reminder that human health is tightly interlinked with the fate of wild animals trapped and sold in trade markets around the world. With your help we can bring an end to illegal and unsustainable wild bird trade practices in Asia, where we are currently working. Plus, thanks to our generous donors, we have received match funding of up to £50,000. This means we can DOUBLE whatever you donate today.

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449

FORESTS OF HOPE

With half the world in lockdown, conservationists are finding new ways to fight deforestation and support communities that live in tropical forest landscapes. And to help

communicate the importance of the decisions we make, our new animation turns to an unlikely inspiration - videogames

Cressida Stevens


W H A T ’ S Y O U R

N E X T M O V E ?

“The Accelerator acts as a

matchmaker between projects

and investors “


o the images on this page look familiar? If so, there’s a good chance that you – or someone you know – have

played a turn-based strategy game.In this genre of videogame, the rules

and objectives differ from title to title, but generally revolve around the player attempting to defeat their opponent – either human or computer-controlled – by making decisions on their turn. Capture that farm, or attack the opposing army? Invest in resources, or build a tank? Each decision you make has far-reaching consequences that, to the novice player, will only reveal themselves several turns down the line, at which point it will be too late. That’s what makes the expert players expert – the ability to evaluate the gravity of each decision, and the effect it will have further down the line.

The same principle is true, it turns out, of landscape conservation, and at a ground-breaking digital conference this summer, BirdLife’s Forest Landscape Sustainability Accelerator used an animation, of which you are looking at stills from, to highlight the parallels to key stakeholders working in the sector.

For the uninitiatied, our Accelerator is an unique initiative to help BirdLife Partners continue their vital work with communities in some of the

D

4 Strategy games usually reward a player for exploiting the environment. Our animation turns this on it head and shows the effects of real-life decisions

world’s most species-rich tropical forests. Grants from public, private and charitable sectors have for a long time enabled remarkable success in securing legal protection for these forests on a project-by-project basis. Yet, a new approach is required if forest conservation is to get the long-lasting financial security it desperately needs. Therefore, the Accelerator exists to put renewed energy into tackling one of conservation’s biggest challenges – sustainable funding and finance.

Now into its second year, the Accelerator works to create more sustainable, diversified funding models and grow ideas that secure the future conservation of the world’s tropical forests. Modelled on the methods used by start-up companies in the tech sector, an ‘accelerator’ provides support and mentorship, and acts as a hub and matchmaker through

which investors find new companies and promising investments. Having successfully applied this to forest conservation, in just one year we are seeing shifting regional business practices, potential changes to laws, and forest-positive products being shipped around the world.

This year, the face-to-face workshops and crucial ‘pitch’ events planned for June in London, England could not go ahead. Our pioneering initiative was not fazed, however. An innovative digital conference, the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF), was the first in a range of initiatives designed to minimise disruption from COVID-19. Held on 3-5 June, the GLF kickstarted a global conversation on how to transform food systems to protect human well-being and planetary health in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Almost 5,000 people from 185 different countries joined online to listen to top experts in science, business, journalism and policy-making, as well as community leaders and young entrepreneurs. Representing all stages of the food supply chain, they discussed how to feed a booming global population whilst preserving the essential functioning of ecosystems in the long-term.

W H A T ’ S Y O U R

N E X T M O V E ?

“Managed landscapes are linked to every

choice we make in the supermarket“

42

FORESTS OF HOPE


On the first day of the conference, the Accelerator hosted a session on the forest-positive future of food and livelihoods. The session kicked off with the aforementioned ‘strategy’ animation, which walked viewers through a forest landscape to explain the purpose of the Accelerator. It shows landscapes are not just made of trees, wildlife and local communities - they are formed by the decisions people make. Just as one decision can have untold consequences four or five turns down the line in a strategy game, the animation shows how a single, typical decision can affect many aspects of the landscape, including its wildlife, water supply, soil condition, farmers’ incomes and more.

Foundations laid, landscape leaders in Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia and Cambodia took to the screen to showcase their landscape initiatives. The online platform gave us a unique opportunity to step into a tropical forest and hear from the very people fighting deforestation on their doorstep, and witness the deep-rooted issues that forest loss creates.

“I see this forest landscape like islands, surrounded by a sea of cattle

ranches and sugar cane”, said Alice Reisfeld, Project Manager at SAVE Brasil (BirdLife Partner). South America’s Atlantic Forest hosts biodiversity thought to exceed even that of the Amazon, but this fragmentation is a huge threat to that status. Alice referred to the plight of the Alagoas Antwren Myrmotherula snowi. “This tiny bird has a population of less than 30 individuals remaining in the world. Two of its cousins became extinct in this region very recently – I don’t want to see that happen again.”

It’s not only wildlife that can’t afford to lose the Atlantic Forest; it is responsible for the water supply of millions of people and its resources form the basis of many local

communities’ income. This means that poor planning and decision-making can have serious knock-on effects. Without collaboration between the different players in a landscape, isolated projects tend to fail. For example, it is difficult to reap the rewards of a shade-grown cocoa, without addressing the oil palm company who is causing deforestation down the road, and disturbing local weather conditions. It is difficult to encourage better cattle ranching practices if the local bank continues giving loans for intense production methods. To solve these deep-rooted issues, the Accelerator promotes a ‘landscape approach’ that calls for conscious, inclusive planning and strong governance to join up initiatives. Well-managed landscapes meet the needs of the present without compromising the future.

But strategy game players know that it is not enough to rely on a single technique – you have to adapt your gameplan to your circumstances. Evelyn Brítez is the Coordinator of the Yerba Mate Initiative for Guyra Paraguay (BirdLife Partner), a programme seeking to protect forests

by harnessing the nation’s appetite for yerba mate tea. She emphasised why forest conservation is not just a case of marking off protected areas.

Brítez works in San Rafael, also in the Atlantic Forest, a reserve which was created in 1992 but to this day remains a park only on paper, lacking the proper legal protection and government support. This renders the site subject to logging, illegal poaching and clearance for crops. “In order to build better strategies for people, their livelihoods and their food systems, we need to meet their needs while protecting forests, biodiversity and water resources”, says Brítez. Guyra Paraguay supports communities in growing shade-grown, organic and fair trade yerba mate and exporting it to higher-value markets.

From tea to cocoa, rice to candlenut, BirdLife Partners are developing the sales of forest-positive commodities

The Accelerator’s cohort and team are actively seeking new collaborations with those who can help us to accelerate sustainability strategies. There are a number of ways to get involved with the landscapes and across the portfolio; from landscape problem-solving, to advisory, collaboration, and to kick-starting finance. Watch the animation & find out more at: www.birdlife.org/sustaining-forests

The BirdLife Forest Landscape Sustainability Accelerator contributes to Trillion Trees, and is supported from 2020 by Hempel Foundation and Google Foundation.

and carbon schemes – and the Accelerator is giving this work the boost it needs to become a long-term solution. Bou Vorsak, BirdLife Cambodia Programme Manager, explained how farmers in the Ibis Rice scheme have welcomed the opportunity to receive a premium price for their rice, rewarding their efforts to grow organically and without encroaching on the forest.

Our landscape leaders are driven by the potential for long-term, systemic change for nature and people, not just a quick win or greenwash for companies. “Investing in Mbeliling [an Accelerator landscape in Indonesia] is not just giving you an economic return on investment. It is having social, ecological and governance impacts which are needed by the people helping to protect it”, noted Adi Widyanto, Head of Conservation and Development at Burung Indonesia.

Outside of the conference, the Accelerator cohort have adapted to the new digital reality. They are staying connected through webinars and online discussions, so even if circumstances mean they can’t be in the forest, they can continue to advance their protection. Yet our landscape leaders are not the only ones who can steer towards a more secure future for forests. As Katie Sims, BirdLife’s Forest Programme Officer remarks: “The future of managed landscapes are linked to every supermarket purchase, every politician we elect, every business we invest in.” We can all have an impact through the decisions we make. And with that, it’s your turn. What’s your next move?


magine you’re a Long-tailed Duck, and you see a fish in the water right underneath you. You dive towards it – but as you catch it in your beak,

you hit a wall of near-invisible netting, meeting the same fate as the fish you’re trying to eat.

This is a danger that seabirds face every day. Many modern ‘gillnets’ – vertical sheets of netting held up by floating buoys, which trap passing fish by the gills – are made of monofilament nylon that is practically invisible underwater. This material is used worldwide,

Iparticularly among small-scale fishers owing to its low cost. To the public, ingesting plastic may be one of the most well-known threats to seabirds; yet an estimated 400,000 seabirds are killed each year through accidental ‘bycatch’ in fishing nets. The problem spans across the avian world: nearly 150 different seabird species thought to be susceptible to this danger.

To tackle this issue, researchers and conservationists including the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) have for many years been exploring ways to make gillnets more visible to birds

44

FEATURE


L I F E B U O Y S F O R

B I R D SMany seabirds meet their end accidentally tangled in fishing nets. In a brand new

approach to this problem, our Partners are studying the way seabirds detect predators, trialling unique floating gadgets that could keep them away from netting

Yann Rouxel

0 XThe Looming-eyes Buoy, AKA the ‘Bobby’ Photo Andres Kalamees

underwater, through modifications to the nets, or adding devices such as high-contrast panels or LED lights. However, given the challenges of the underwater environment (where even marine birds have reduced vision), as well as the need to avoid warding off the fish themselves, underwater strategies have so far had limited success.

It was high time for a new approach.Researchers went back to the drawing board, asking simple questions: What do diving seabirds see? How do they forage? What do they avoid? With the help of animal behavioural ecologists and informed by tracking data, we realised the answer could lie in preventing birds from coming near the gillnets at all.

When researching solutions, nature – as it often does – offered some hints. The conspicuous ‘eyespots’, which are found on numerous creatures such as butterflies, can evoke an avoidance response in many bird species. Similarly, looming movements have been found to trigger a collision-risk signal in birds’ brains. On land, the combination of these two visual stimuli (i.e. eyes appearing to move towards a bird) has resulted in significant escape responses in several bird species.

To adapt this technique to the marine environment, we developed a floating buoy that displays large, obvious ‘looming eyes’ that can be seen from a long way off. As the buoy bobs in the water, the tall pole sways conspicuously, and the eyes rotate in the wind. We called it the Looming-eyes buoy (LEB), or more affectionately, ‘The Bobby’.

Since February 2020, we have been working

This project is made possible thanks to the support of the National Geographic Society, as well as the Baltic Sea Conservation Foundation for the development and production of the LEB prototypes.

with the Estonian Ornithological Society (BirdLife Partner) to test the effect of this new device on birds out at sea. Trials are currently ongoing in Küdema Bay protected area, off the Estonian island of Saaremaa. The bay attracts large concentrations of wintering seabirds, including the Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalis and Steller’s Eider Polysticta stelleri, both of which are Vulnerable to extinction, largely due to bycatch. Researchers are monitoring the behaviour of any seabird that enters within 50 metres of the ‘Bobbys’ compared to an area containing regular fishing buoys. No gillnets are present in either location, making the experiments completely safe for the birds. If these trials prove successful, the ‘Bobbys’ could be rolled out commercially, saving seabird lives across the world.


B I R D

F A C T F I L E

LONG-TAILED DUCK

Clangula hyemalis

RED LIST STATUS: Vulnerable

RANGE: Circumpolar distribution including

northern America, Europe and Asia

THREATS: Bycatch in Baltic Sea wintering

grounds, oil pollution, hunting

FAST FACT: Can dive to a depth of 60 metres

2 Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalisPhoto Dave Inman/Flickr

4 The species is the only duck that uses its wings to dive, allowing it to explore deeper depths Photo Wolfgang Wander

1 Bobbys waiting to be placed out at sea Photo Andres Kalamees

MARINE

46

IRREPLACEABLE


Not only is Mount Kenya Forest one of the most iconic landscapes in Africa, it is also a crucial source of clean water for the country. Find out how Nature Kenya, our

Partner in the East African nation, is empowering local citizens to form powerful partnerships that can protect and restore the forest for decades to come

Lewis Kihumba

M O U N T A I NR E S C U E

cuckoo calls in the distance, its soft, low voice travelling through the treetops. The hitherto silent forest suddenly bursts into a symphony

of birdsong, occasionally punctuated by the trumpeting of elephants on the distant plains. Then, just as suddenly, the forest falls eerily silent once again. This is Mount Kenya Forest, part of an ecosystem which includes Kenya’s highest and Africa’s second highest mountain, rising to 5,199 metres. Mount Kenya’s sprawling slopes are cloaked in an array of ecosystems, ranging from forests to bamboo groves to moorland, and ultimately giving way to rocks, ice and snow on its three peaks.

Spanning five counties in central Kenya, the forest covers an area of 213,082 hectares and is one of Kenya’s most important biodiversity hotspots. And like so much of our natural world, it benefits local people, too. It is one of Kenya’s five main water catchments and provides vital

socio-econonomic and ecosystem services, including water purification, climate regulation and soil retention. Sadly, over the years the forest’s protective cover has come under threat from various human activities including logging, charcoal burning, and illegal settlements. This in turn has led to soil erosion, causing the sedimentation of rivers and streams and affecting agricultural productivity downstream. Local people have reported increased human-wildlife conflict, with elephants routinely invading farms.

Since 1998, Nature Kenya (BirdLife Partner) has been carrying out various interventions to restore Mount Kenya Forest. One key strategy is collaborating with communities living adjacent to the forest through Community Forest Associations (CFAs). Currently, Nature Kenya is partnering with 27 CFAs drawn from various counties surrounding the forest including Meru, Tharaka-Nithi, Embu, Kirinyaga and Nyeri,

0 Since 2017, communities have planted 650,000 trees to restore the forest All photos by Nature Kenya

A


B I R D

F A C T F I L E

SHARPE’S LONGCLAW Macronyx sharpie

RED LIST STATUS: Endangered

RANGE: Two sites in Kenya

THREATS: Loss of high-altitude grassland habitat

due to expansion of agriculture

FAST FACT: Extremely sedentary, with an

average home range of just half a hectare.

working together to restore degraded forest blocks. In 2019, local CFA members planted 421,800 indigenous trees in 18 forest blocks and propagated over 700,000 tree seedlings in their nurseries.

To further streamline forest restoration operations, Nature Kenya is giving local people the skills they need to independently protect their forest. CFA members are trained in leadership skills, governance and institutional management, resource mobilization, advocacy, biodiversity monitoring, and more. Resource mobilization training in particular has allowed the CFAs to engage other stakeholders to finance forest conservation efforts.

Because of this, Mount Kenya’s 27 CFAs are now among the recipients of funding worth US $ 32,000 from the Upper Tana Natural Resources Management Project, which supports communities to manage natural resources sustainably. This funding is a milestone in the participatory forest management approach in Mount Kenya. Community groups are now directly mobilizing resources from public and private entities to finance conservation activities. The funds will go towards supporting various sustainable livelihood projects such as setting up tree nurseries, which will create employment and reduce poverty levels among forest-adjacent communities.

Besides funding, the Upper Tana Natural Resources Management Project also seeks to improve the incomes and living standards of target groups through initiatives that work alongside sustainable resource use. To this end, 22 CFAs received a grant worth US $ 20,000 from the project in 2019. Furthermore, the CFAs are engaging other organisations and corporations including the Mount Kenya Trust, Safaricom PLC, and Green Energy Limited.

In addition to these significant achievements, Nature Kenya, with funding from World Land

Trust, The Darwin Initiative, and the newly launched Trillion Trees ReForest Fund, is partnering with the CFAs and other stakeholders to restore some of the most degraded areas of Mount Kenya forest. Since 2017, about 650,000 trees, covering 650 hectares, have been planted through this partnership.

“Working with CFAs is one of the best way of achieving our goal of ten percent forest cover in Kenya”, says Joel Siele, the Local Empowerment Manager at Nature Kenya.

A business case for restoration of Mount Kenya forest has also been developed with support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund*. Under this initiative, local communities (water ‘sellers’) protect and restore the watershed, with financial support from downstream water users (‘the buyers’). For example, Kenya Breweries Limited adopted the business case in 2017 and has since facilitated planting and nurturing of 100,000 seedlings.

It may be too early to fully assess the impact of the forest restoration work in Mount Kenya, but things are certainly looking up. “Illegal activities have started to decrease and communities are more aware of the importance of conserving this important water catchment”, concludes Siele.

*The Partnering with Business for Mount Kenya

Water Ecosystem Services Restoration project was

made possible through funding from the Critical

Ecosystem Partnership Fund, a joint initiative of

l’Agence Française de Développement, Conservation

International, the European Union, the Global

Environment Facility, the Government of Japan and

the World Bank.

4 Local communities are trained in how to explore new funding partnerships

7 The stunning landscape is threatened by logging and charcoal burning


In response to the incident in New York involving birder Christian Cooper, and ongoing Black Lives Matter

demonstrations in USA and worldwide – as well as in encouragement of the first #BlackBirdersWeek – BirdLife

staff based in the UK, Senegal & Kenya voice their reflections and advice as birders.

BIRDS ARE

COLOUR BLIND

NATURE & PEOPLE

e’re changing the face of birding”, says Corina Newsome, joint leader of #BlackBirdersWeek, an effort launched by

Black scientists and outdoor explorers who want the world to know that the Black birding community is thriving and growing. “We want our community to know that they’re welcome here and to not be deterred by people who have attempted to make these spaces hostile to us.”

Someone who experienced hostility first-hand, while birding in Central Park, is Christian Cooper (board member of New York City’s Audubon Society, a Chapter of BirdLife’s

Partner in the USA). Audubon issued a statement in response, highlighting the suspicion, confrontation and dangers Black Americans face in outdoor spaces.

As Cooper himself said in an interview with the New York Times, which echoes BirdLife’s own sentiment: “We should be out here. The birds belong to all of us… The birds don’t care what colour you are.”

The experiences relayed by BirdLife staff over the next few pages are, thankfully, largely positive, and show that birding can (and should) be a joyous and inclusive experience for everyone: an important inspiration during these crucial times.

W

48

By Shaun Hurrell


“IT CALLS FOR A STRONG PERSONALITY”NGONÉ DIOP, COASTAL SEABIRDS PROJECT OFFICER, BIRDLIFE AFRICA

studied biology at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, at that time I had no idea that I will end up doing ornithological research and being passionate about birds. On my first

fieldwork day, as I was undertaking my Masters degree, I could not identify any bird species, but was impressed by the number and diversity the birds. This encouraged me to join a national NGO working on bird and biodiversity conservation (Nature Communauté Développement, NCD) where I became the Important Bird & Biodiversity Areas focal point. In my experience, women need to fight to demonstrate that they deserve trust, as we are always viewed as the weak gender and as not having the skills to do conservation work in the field. It calls for a strong personality, and it is important that women see it as an opportunity to improve themselves and earn respect.

I

APR-JUN 2019 • BIRDLIFE

“THE BIRDS BELONG TO ALL OF US… THE BIRDS DON’T CARE WHAT COLOUR YOU ARE.”CHRISTIAN COOPER


NATURE & PEOPLE

“THERE’S NO PLACE FOR RACISM IN BIRDING”JULIUS ARINAITWE, DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP & CAPACIT Y DEVELOPMENT, BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL

hen BirdLife launched the #1planet1right campaign earlier this year, it really meant what it says on the tin. We have one planet

whose health is critical for the survival of us all, humanity as one. And this is what it should be.

As if there are not enough challenges in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, runaway emissions of planet-warming gases, large-scale habitat loss, and wide inequalities in terms of opportunities for self-actualisation, this year sees the rotten practice of racism again rear its head! As a black man and a birder, I believe birders have no time and space for racism and other forms of discrimination.

I was introduced to birds as a young boy in Uganda, from the business end of a catapult. It wasn’t until I went to university in my early twenties that I exchanged this for a pair of binoculars. No one at the university or during my stint at Nature Uganda (BirdLife Partner) discriminated against me due to race.

After my studies, I joined BirdLife – and you do not get any more of a diverse workplace than within BirdLife when it comes to people. I have been fortunate to visit at least one Partner in each of the six BirdLife regions, and go on birding outings with their members and staff. Consistently,

I have found that their members harbour strong pride in ‘their birds’ and birding patches, and show them off to whoever shows interest. Due to the common interest that we share in birds, the primary focus of engagement on these outings is to have the best possible experience, seeing the birds at their best. Call me naïve, but discrimination has never come into the picture.

I know several bird guides from all walks of life. Birding is more than an income-generating activity; it’s a deep passion. Even when the target species may require long hours of searching and trekking, the desire to show the birds to the birders fires enthusiasm to endure. The bird guides strive to get each and every birder on the trip to have the best experience, by embracing – rather than penalising – diversity!

BirdLife with its network of 116 organisations in 113 countries, mobilises broader constituencies that reach millions of people. We believe in the power of many – and work to mobilise as many people as possible to engage in the all-important task of securing a healthy natural planet for us all. We love birds as components of biodiversity and as ambassadors for all nature. We strive to increase the numbers of people who enjoy and protect them. Any discrimination defeats this underlying principle and has no room in society.

W

didn’t realise it, but I had been birding since I was eight years old – those days when I would be sent out to take care of cattle

in the wooded fields on the slopes of Aberdare Ranges, Kenya. It was not birding in the sense you are thinking about. It was the usual interaction with nature my friends and I did, sometimes tasting, touching, breaking and climbing and all those things that boys do. I knew every conspicuous plant and animal, including birds by my local name, and even had stories about them.

But it was birds, especially Turacos, pigeons, doves and weavers that really attracted me, and for different reasons. When I joined university and found a few members of the local wildlife club, it immediately clicked and fell into place. I immediately found English names for the birds I knew already and started the ‘sport’ of knowing more. It has never stopped. My bird list is long. I have held probably thousands of birds in my hands, ringing them. I immediately looked for fellow ornithologists after university. Birds gave me a career and made me travel the world. Until today one of my brothers calls me mundu wa ichocho, directly translated as ‘man of thrushes’, and appreciates how far the ichocho (thrushes) can take one.

“BIRDS CAN TAKE YOU FAR”KARIUKI NDANG’ANG’A, HEAD OF CONSERVATION, BIRDLIFE AFRICA

I


“NOT A WHITE MAN’S HOBBY”HAZELL SHOKELLU THOMPSON, ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT; FORMER BIRDLIFE GLOBAL DIRECTOR, PARTNERSHIP, CAPACIT Y & COMMUNITIES; AND BIRDLIFE’S INTERIM CEO (2014-15)

“MY POSITIVE EXPERIENCES - JUST LUCK?”KIRAGU MWANGI, SENIOR CAPACIT Y DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL

was born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone and have had a lifelong passion for wildlife and birds. Here, early on, I was used to being viewed as the crazy “birdman”. I had to become adept at explaining the value of birds and pointing out that

birding was not a “white man’s hobby”. This turned out to be good practice for teaching Biology to University of Sierra Leone students (another passion) and for a 20-year career in conservation with BirdLife International. Luckily, in Sierra Leone, we now have a small – but growing – band of young birders.

As a black man, I have gone birding all over the world as part of my job and I also go birding regularly for leisure in the UK – all without incident. I often say that birders always come across as a very amiable bunch, regardless of race. This was why the awful racial events of the last week in the USA (one involving a black birder, another a racial murder) came as such a dreadful and painful hammer-blow to my hopes of an increasingly globalised and colour-blind world.

Working at BirdLife was an amazing opportunity to work with and learn from birders and conservationists from every race, colour and orientation in the world. Just like the birds we worked with, the BirdLife Partners know no boundaries in their efforts to save birds globally; making the linkages, partnerships, and collaborations across continents to do so. Underpinning all of this was the joy of birding, and the will to build the capacity of young conservationists wherever we could.

In retrospect, I start to wonder why I was usually the only black man on UK reserves when I went on birding trips? Also, what if I had not usually been in groups when I went birding around the world or had been much younger (most racial attacks target young men or women); would my experience have been different? These thoughts reveal the danger we must all avoid, i.e. the mistrust and fear these events have stirred. We must not let these horrific events hold us back; we (black, white, people of all colour) must press for change personally and collectively. Racism, police brutality against blacks and abuse must stop, everywhere it occurs – including the UK. We must live and expand the BirdLife ideal of inclusivity, diversity, and enjoyment of nature by all.

ast evening while sat in the back garden here in the UK, I watched a pair of Blackbird males fight over territory, a pair of Dunnocks following their young fledglings from branch to branch, and a pair of Wood Pigeon chicks, now almost fully

grown. Birding has been a simple and effortless hobby that gives pleasure to the soul; it emboldens the spirit when appreciating the beauty of nature. I came into birding by chance over 20 years ago through working for Nature Kenya, our BirdLife Partner in the country.

For my work, I needed to study and appreciate them to a level of indicator species for an important site or habitat for conservation. To my surprise it never became a chore, but a pleasurable exercise either being part of monitoring teams or causal birdwatching with friends or alone.

With birding, I have been lucky to travel widely to many parts of the world, in all continents except Antarctica. On my travels, there has never been an incident where I have been mistreated by anyone. I suppose it has just been good luck or being in the company of good friends while birding in as far-flung places as Australia, Canada, The Cook Islands, Brazil, Russia, or in the USA. Even in remote, spectacular places far away from my community in Kenya, it was always easy to connect with strangers whilst birding.

The tragic killing of George Floyd in the USA, and the triggered civil rights protests for Black people, have given me pause to reflect deeply on how some people endure hardship and prejudice instead of the right to be treated with dignity; even, by extension, the right to enjoy the simple pleasure of birding without suspicion. I am humbled by Christian Cooper’s response to his experience in Central Park. His modest request to a white woman to leash her dog as instructed in park notices could have turned into a sad affair, especially for Christian as an African-American, who was just out birding.

Until these events in the USA, I have never thought of myself a ’black birder’ – perhaps I have just been lucky! We now have an opportunity to encourage other people of colour to come out and enjoy this simple pleasure, and the great outdoors. Even just one or two more taking up this simple hobby in their gardens.

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NATURE & PEOPLE

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T H O U S A N DIn 2012, researchers made the alarming

discovery that the Grey-breasted Parakeet was now confined to a single small region in

northeast Brazil. Their campaign has seen the birds make a remarkable comeback from three

fledglings in 2010 to a cumulative total of 1,165 fledglings

Kate Tointon

F R O M T H R E E

F L E D G L I N G S T O A

he Grey-breasted Parakeet Pyrrhura griseipectus (Endangered) was once widespread throughout the Atlantic Forest of northeast Brazil. However,

ten years ago this flamboyantly feathered bird faced a bleak future. Deforestation, illegal hunting and poaching had caused severe population declines and local extinctions in at least 15 areas where it had historically been found.

A 2012 project funded by the Conservation Leadership Programme, and led by Fábio Nunes, carried out surveys over 4,000 kilometres of forest roads and trails and about 100 interviews with local residents in Ceará State. With the exception of one small remnant population, however, they found no evidence of the species.

These results confirmed that the last remaining population was restricted to two adjacent sites in the Baturité Mountains, with 80% of the birds found at just one of these sites. “These parakeets were facing a number of threats, including a highly restricted range, very little remaining habitat, few available nesting sites, and pressure from poachers seeking to snatch chicks for the pet trade”, says Nunes.

This alarming discovery sparked a government-led Conservation Action Plan for the species, and an international partnership between three NGOs (AQUASIS in Brazil, Loro Parque Fondación in Spain and ZGAP in Germany) went on to support Fábio’s next goal: to create the safe home these birds so desperately needed.

Crucial to the parakeets’ recovery were artificial nest boxes where they could breed in peace while being protected from poachers. In 2010, the team designed the boxes to mimic the parakeets’ natural nests in depth, opening size and position. The parakeets have been successfully breeding in them ever since.

Another vital transformation happened among local communities that live alongside the parakeets. The team formed partnerships with local residents, who agreed to help them

monitor the artificial nests on their properties and provide a round-the-clock watch against poachers. The team also formed Private Protected Areas and a Grey-Breasted Parakeet Wildlife Refuge to enhance protection not just for this species, but also for other endangered birds in the region.

The team’s strategy has resulted in an extraordinary turnaround for the Grey-breasted Parakeet. Just three fledglings had been recorded in 2010 when the first 30 nest boxes were installed. Since then, the number of successful fledglings has been steadily increasing each year, and the team has installed 70 more nest boxes to keep up with the growing demand. In a landmark achievement for the project, last year the cumulative total number of fledglings reached 1,165—an average increase of about 130 fledglings each year. Because of this, in 2017 BirdLife reclassified the Grey-breasted Parakeets from Critically Endangered to Endangered on the Red List.

Scientific insights from the project, as well as new management plans and legislation, will be critical in the long-term conservation of this exuberant parrot. However, according to Nunes, one key challenge is protecting its forest habitat.

“Our dream is to bring the species back to the areas where it should never have disappeared and diversify the gene pool of wild populations. His plan, developed with his team, is to create more protected habitats, recover degraded forests, and ensure the parakeets can eventually survive without the help of nest boxes—and ultimately use what he has learned from this incredible success story to help other Endangered species in Brazil.

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The Conservation Leadership Programme is a partnership between Fauna & Flora International, BirdLife and WCS. Together, we direct project funding and training to early career leaders from developing countries who are tackling priority conservation challenges.


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F A C T F I L E

GREY-BREASTED PARAKEET

Pyrrhura griseipectus

RED LIST STATUS: Endangered

RANGE: Ceará state, Northeastern Brazil

THREATS: Habitat destruction, illegal

logging, trapping for the pet trade

FAST FACT: Though usually nesting in hollow

trees, one population inhabits rocky mountain

outcrops

2 The nests are designed to mimic the depth and positioning of the species’ natural nests – to great successAll photos Fábio Nunes

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

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THE RED LIST


A landmark policy resolution could prove a major step forward towards our mission of ensuring vultures are safe from poisoning

across their entire range

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H O P E F O R

VULTURESRachel Gartner

Photo Bjorn Olesen


ultures carry an air of invincibility about them. To see these majestic raptors soar above us, you would be forgiven for thinking nothing

could harm them – but recent history has shattered that illusion. The well-documented Asian vulture crisis of the 1990s - which saw the Indian subcontinent’s populations plummet from abundance to the edge of extinction in the space of a decade, should have been a wake-up call to the world on the catastrophic impact poisoning can have on these ecologically-important birds – but as we entered 2020, we still lacked the robust intergovernmental policy required to safeguard these scavengers. All this began to change at a critical migratory species summit this past February.

Before we get into that, a recap for the uninitiated; while many vulture poisoning incidents are intentional, such as that which claimed the lives of large numbers of Hooded Vultures in Guinea-Bissau earlier this year, the poisoning incidents that saw Asian vulture numbers drop by 99% were purely accidental. The cause was diclofenac – a common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used in livestock – which is lethal to vultures that feed on the bodies of cattle that die soon after being dosed. The result is that just one contaminated carcass can wipe out an entire flock of vultures.

BirdLife and its partners in South Asia including the Bombay National History Society and Bird Conservation Nepal (BirdLife in India and Nepal

respectively), supported by the RSPB (BirdLife in the UK) and all working under the Saving Asia’s Vultures from Extinction (SAVE) consortium, have managed to slow and even halt those declines, bringing about increases, in certain areas like Nepal where decisive sustained actions have been taken, most notably getting veterinary diclofenac effectively banned and local vets and communities behind these measures through ‘Vulture Safe Zone’ initiatives and activities. However, the drug – and other NSAIDs* which are definitely or potentially harmful to vultures – are still being widely used elsewhere in the world, putting many vultures in peril and compromising the good work being performed in other vulture-range states.

For several years, BirdLife International has been pushing for a strong intergovernmental policy on the use of veterinary NSAIDs. And in February this year, a resolution adopted by the thirteenth Conference of Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS COP13) covered their use and regulation as never before, offering new hope for African-Eurasian vultures.

The resolution at the CMS COP13 outlined three key actions that perfectly reflect what BirdLife and SAVE have been calling for: tests on all existing veterinary NSAIDs to determine which are harmful to vultures and which are safe, withdrawing licensing for veterinary use from those (including diclofenac) that are vulturetoxic or implementing adequate risk assessment; safety testing of any new

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H O P E F O R

VULTURES

PREVENTING EXTINCTIONS

Q U I C K F A C T

*WHAT ARE NSAIDS?

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs,

a family of drugs used in both people and

animals to treat pain and inflammation.

2 CMS COP13, the event where the resolution was adopted, took place in Gandhinagar, India this past FebruaryPhoto CMS

4 Griffon Vulture Gyps fulvus Photo LeAndr/Shutterstock

0 Indian Vulture Gyps indicus in Rajasthan Photo ErickN/Shutterstock

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PREVENTING EXTINCTIONS

veterinary NSAIDs before they are licensed; and the identification and the promotion of safe alternative drugs. It also supports the actions proposed in the CMS Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian Vultures.

All three steps are necessary for the long-term conservation of African-Eurasian vultures, but according to Roger Safford, Senior Programme Manager in BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme, the safety testing of both new and existing NSAIDs is particularly key: “We need to look at all the veterinary anti-inflammatories and withdraw from veterinary use the ones that are toxic to vultures. If we replace diclofenac with another drug that is just as toxic to vultures, then we just perpetuate the problem.”

Once we know which drugs are harmful, governments of vulture range states can ban their use in livestock and suggest safe alternatives, keeping vultures out of harm’s way.

But this resolution is just the first step in a long process and there is still much work to do. We now need to ensure that governments follow up on the commitment, against the powerful pharmaceutical lobby.

And this could be tricky. Despite knowing the risks of diclofenac, several European countries still approved it for use in cattle in 2014. Worryingly, it is now becoming widely used by vets in Spain and Italy, countries with large vulture populations. Such use being permitted in Europe, increases the chances of similar licensing in Africa.

Iván Ramírez, BirdLife’s Head of Conservation for Europe & Central Asia, explains that part of the problem is that veterinary associations are pressing governments not to ban products. “Their rationale is that diclofenac wouldn’t have such a severe impact on vulture populations in Europe as it did in Asia because of the way

livestock is managed in Europe. But there is scientific evidence suggesting that Eurasian Griffons, for example, could decline by 7% per year if exposed to this drug. This is an unnecessary risk considering it takes only a tiny proportion of dosed carcasses accidently being left out to kill large numbers of vultures.

There’s no excuse for continuing to allow these drugs to be used, with several affordable and safe alternative anti-inflammatory drugs available which don’t compromise animal welfare, food standards or public health. And healthy vulture populations offer numerous benefits to people: by their unsurpassed scavenging efficiency, disposing of tens of thousands of tonnes of dead animals every year, they clean up the environment and help to reduce disease transmission at carcasses.

Following on from the resolution, we are urging governments and veterinary pharmaceutical companies to join our efforts and take the responsible course of action. We’re developing best practice for how to do this, providing information to governments who are also interested in banning toxic veterinary NSAIDs, and testing various NSAIDs to determine whether or not they’re safe. We’ll be doing all we can, both in political arenas and on the ground, to make sure old world vultures are protected – throughout their range.

4 Bearded Vulture Gypaetus barbatus Can be found in mountainous regions of Europe (and this past July, in Derbyshire, UK!)Photo Michael Ninger/Shutterstock

7 Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus Photo via Shutterstock

3 At CMS COP13, Indian PM Narenda Modi pledged that his country would take a leading role on the conservation of species on the Central Asian Flyway - and also mentioned vultures during the inauguration. India has taken over presidency of CMS COP for the next three yearsPhoto Vicky Peavoy

We would like to thank Species Champions, Sean Dennis and Barry Sullivan, for their ongoing funding and support of our work with vultures.BirdLife’s efforts are made possible in part by its membership of the Restore Species partnership, which works to prevent extinctions caused by illegal and unsustainable trade and hunting, and poisoning.

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58 JUL-SEP 2020 • BIRDLIFE

Have birds inspired you throughout your life?

With your support, BirdLife will keep protecting and campaigning for birds and nature across the world; saving species, protecting the most precious sites, and preventing habitat destruction. By leaving a legacy, you can help ensure that generations to come can continue to enjoy our planet’s incredible nature.

Leave a lasting gift for the wildlife you love.

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We’ve put together a guide that will help you prepare before visiting your solicitor.

Download: www.birdlife.org/legacies

E-mail: [email protected]

Call: +44 (0)1223 277318

By post: Legacies team at BirdLife International The David Attenborough Building, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QZ United Kingdom

LEGACIES

Learn more

ncluding a gift in your Will to BirdLife International is one of the most effective ways to help us preserve the future for wildlife.

BirdLife has worked for almost a century to protect the world’s most vital species and habitats. As we build on the global network of protected areas, species and partner organisations that we have created, we are particularly reliant on legacy gift support to keep this vital work going.Ruth Ward explains why she and her late husband John are leaving a legacy gift to BirdLife: “John loved birdwatching, using his ears as much as his eyes. The gift of impersonating bird calls, especially waders,

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Why leave a legacy?

enabled him with help from friends Bryan and Alan to produce the record ‘Big Jake Calls the Waders’. John enjoyed passing on his birdwatching knowledge especially to youngsters. He used to say we have to be the voice for birds to ensure their habitat is conserved.With today’s pressures upon the planet it is important organisations like BirdLife are supported in their work. Birdwatching gave John so much pleasure and he would help in any way to ensure birds are around for future generations.” BirdLife thanks Ruth and John for their kind donation, which will help us preserve the natural world which has brought them so much joy.

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BCI


HOT OFF THE PRESS

iven the worldwide fame of the Indian Peafowl Pavo cristatus, it’s strange to imagine a peafowl species at risk of extinction. Sadly,

the Green Peafowl Pavo muticus (Endangered) is something of a forgotten sibling. Formerly common and widespread across Southeast Asia, the familiar combination of hunting, habitat destruction and human disturbance has reduced the species to a few fragmented populations. Now, the question is how best to protect these remaining strongholds. Researchers compared the viability of two populations facing very different threat and protection levels. In HuaiKhaKhaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, western Thailand, they found that the population is growing, and likely to persist for at least 100 years, thanks to dedicated protection and low human disturbance. However, the population in Yok Don National Park, south-central Vietnam – a location with high habitat disturbance and significant hunting pressure – is likely to go extinct before the end of this century. If we humans want to save this bird, it’s clear which path we need to take.

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H I G H L I G H T S

HOW TO SAVE THE GREEN PEAFOWL? LEAVE IT ALONE

The latest scientific breakthroughs from BirdLife’s quarterly peer-reviewed journal

Green PeafowlPhoto Roger Smith/Flickr


ometimes, it’s not that satisfying to say “I told you so”. In 2013, experts predicted that the Bengal

Florican Houbaropsis bengalensis (Critically Endangered) would be extinct in Southeast Asia within a decade. Recent surveys of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap floodplain, which holds the last population in the region, support this prediction, with a 55% decline in the number of displaying males over five years. Data indicated that Bengal Floricans tend to be lost from sites when the area of grassland falls below 25 square kilometres, and that male Bengal Floricans abandon their display territories when grassland is destroyed. Although the situation is desperate, these findings also offer a glimmer of hope, by showing that the species could disperse and colonise newly-created suitable habitat.

WHAT’S STRESSING OUT EUROPE’S FARMLAND BIRDS?

THE BENGAL FLORICAN NEEDS SPACE TO STRUT ITS STUFF

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BCI

t’s no surprise that human disturbance is harmful to wildlife – but exactly how does it happen? A study comparing two

declining species, the European Roller Coracias garrulus and the Eurasian Scops-owl Otus scops, on Spanish farmland, found that both species suffered stress due to human activity – but in opposite ways. Nesting European Rollers were found to have the highest levels of stress hormones in areas with intense farming activity. However, in an interesting twist, feeding rates were also higher, suggesting disturbance was the price parents paid for gaining access to the extra prey flushed out by farming practices. The Eurasian Scops-owl, however, displayed the highest stress levels near roads: probably because they are still used at night, when the owl is awake and active.

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A L S O I N T H I S I S S U E :

› Evaluation of disturbance effect on geese caused by an approaching unmanned aerial vehicle

› Influence of historical and contemporary habitat changes on the population genetics of the endemic South African parrot Poicephalus robustus

› Fishery bycatch is among the most important threats to the European population of Greater Scaup Aythya marila

A N D M U C H M O R E . . . Bengal Florican

Photo Dhritiman Mukherjee

Eurasian Scops-owlPhoto Frank Vassen/Flickr

European RollerPhoto Bernerd Dupont/Flickr

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SCIENCE SPOTLIGHT

What inspired this study?Through involvement with Burung Indonesia’s parrot trade work in Wallacea, I have witnessed incidents of Indonesian parrots being poached from our field sites and transported to demand centres like Singapore and Hong Kong through complex transit routes. These parrots go through an arduous journey in very poor welfare conditions, and many die on the way. This makes me sad! Based in Singapore, I have seen the memberships of parrot hobbyist groups grow over the years. Our past work has shown that Singapore still imports wild-caught parrots, so I wanted to connect the dots and see what we can do in Singapore to make the parrot trade more sustainable.

What were the first steps you took towards achieving that goal?Working with Nature Society Singapore (BirdLife Partner), Wildlife Reserves Singapore and local universities, we conducted questionnaires and interviews with parrot owners here. We hoped to gain insight into why people keep parrots in Singapore, their preferences on species and traits, the social contexts, whether they realise the impacts of parrot keeping on wild populations and whether they were open to owning sustainably sourced parrots.

How pet owners are key to making the parrot trade sustainableNew research reveals the social factors driving demand for parrots in Singapore. Lead author, Anuj Jain, discusses how international trade and domestic demand interact in what he refers to as the ‘ecosystem’ of parrot trade

What were your most significant findings?We found more than half of our study’s participants were in parrot hobbyist groups, and two-thirds agreed that their participation in such groups had encouraged futher purchases. It was heartening to see that over 70% of the parrot owners were concerned about poaching. They love their parrots and prefer to keep captive-bred, sustainably sourced parrots over wild-caught ones, even if that means paying more and waiting longer.

You refer to the parrot trade in Singapore as an ‘ecosystem’ – why is this a helpful concept?Our study taught us that parrot keeping in Singapore is a highly social phenomenon. Parrot owners are influenced by the hobbyist groups

they belong to. Many meet in person with their parrots regularly, as well as online through social media groups and forums. Because of Singapore’s position as an important (legal) parrot transit hub, there are many breeders and suppliers of international repute here. Some also supply to the domestic bird shops. Then there are home breeders and support services like professional parrot sitters. This is an ecosystem with many actors supporting and helping each other.

What implications does this have on the conservation of parrots in trade?Most studies and interventions that address the demand of wildlife trade focus on individual consumers. Understanding the importance of hobbyist groups will put us in a better position to make the trade more sustainable. The positive thing is that parrot owners are supportive of conservation, but Singapore doesn’t have the infrastructure to ensure parrots are sustainably sourced. Fortunately, the government is proactive and keen to implement new licensing and tracking measures to make that possible, and this can only be done effectively if we work closely with the community i.e. hobbyist groups. In the future, we hope to scale up this work across the BirdLife Partnership to apply it to other demand centres in Asia.

Chattering Lory Lorius garrulousPhoto Alan Tunnicliffe

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BY APPOINTMENT TOHER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

SWAROVSKI OPTIKSUPPLIER OF BINOCULARS

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