Chthonic Wildlife Ramblings

Australian Fig Bird Photos

Brendan Moyle — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:37:46 +0000

One of the characteristic birds of the Australian outback is the figbird. I spotted this male feeding near Darwin last year.

#1 Starting

#2 I can taste it

#3 Eating time

#4 Finished

What conservationists really want on the whaling front?

Brendan Moyle — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:00:31 +0000

There’s something that always make me wince whenever the media makes claims about what conservationists want. This was brought home with TV3 announcing that conservationists opposed the government’s moves on commercial whaling.

Actually conservationists are a very diverse lot. We don’t all jump on the anti-whaling band-wagon promoted by some governments and NGOs. This doesn’t mean we are pro-whaling. Let me be clear, I’d like to see Japan cease whaling (as a personal preference). The problem is much of the whaling debate isn’t about conservation, it’s about the principles some countries and NGOs adhere to.

Let’s consider the strategy we’ve been using to persuade whaling countries to stop. In 1982, the IWC agreed to a 5 year moratorium in a vote. The relevant text was

Not withstanding the other provisions of paragraph 10, catch limits for the killing for commercial purposes of whales from all stocks for the 1986 coastal and the 1985/86 pelagic seasons and thereafter shall be zero. This provision will be kept under review, based upon the best scientific advice, and by 1990 at the latest the Commission will undertake a comprehensive assessment of the effects of this decision on whale stocks and consider modification of this provision and the establishment of other catch limits.

The immediate consequences of this was Canada left the IWC. Japan, Russia, Norway and Peru took reservations against it on the basis that the IWC scientific committee had recommended against the moratorium

Canada still harvests hundreds of beluga, narwhal and bowhead annually. So the goal of preventing whaling in that IWC member has been an abject failure.

The principal whaling countries’ reservations meant that they could also continue whaling. (Japan shifted to scientific permits after it later withdrew its reservation). Other whaling countries like Norway and Iceland have continued with commercial permits. And it should be mentioned that many IWC members- even anti-whaling countries like the USA- still issue aboriginal harvest permits.

So has the strategy of political and protest action succeeded? Is the fact that Japan now subsidies its whaling industry as a matter of principle a success? Is the fact that Norway continues to take hundreds of whales commercially a success? Is the fact that Canada told the anti-whaling movement to get stuffed and does it anyway a success? Is the fact that even anti-whaling countries still whale a success?

After nearly thirty years, it’s become increasingly obvious that the strategy of being a hardline, anti-whaling country fails the most basic litmus test. It’s not working to end whaling- it is a bad strategy that is failing.

Indeed, it may be counter-productive if this prompts Japan to support their whalers with subsidies and Japanese consumers are prompted to consume more whale meat as an issue of nationalistic pride. There’s a very good reason why most countries gave up whaling. The economics don’t really work. Converting an economic issue to a matter of principle, doesn’t seem to help whales out a lot.

The second reason I don’t get enthusiastic about saving the whales is this diverts resources from where they are needed. The whale populations that are being harvested are often rated as being of least concern, or very low risk species buy the IUCN*. On the other hand several river dolphin species in Asia are recognised as critically endangered. Most of our native birds are more at risk of extinction than minkes. While various NGOs were pouring money and effort into saving the ‘least concern’ minke whale, the baiji quietly slipped into extinction. The great white shark is now thought to be rarer than the tiger, but there are no like campaigns to save it. The Indian gharial is even rarer and sliding backwards.

Nearly a third of all amphibian and reptile species are estimated to be in serious risk of extinction. We are at a point where thousands of species are at much greater risk than minke whales. Yet the choice is to take those resources we have and put them into "stopping whaling". Trying to save a small set of species not actually threatened by whaling, and giving up on so many more species that are in more urgent need, isn’t the optimal approach. And the fact that this strategy to stop whaling has not succeeded in 30 years feels like a colossal waste of money.

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* IUCN risk rankings for commonly harvested species are:

1) The bowhead whale Balaena mysticetus is Least Concern, but with three subpopulations at elevated risk.

2) The common minke whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata is Least Concern.

3) The Antarctic minke whale B. bonaerensis is Data Deficient

4) The Gray Whale Eschrichtius robustus is Least Concern

5) The Narwhal Monodon monoceros is Near Threatened

6) The Beluga Delphinapterus leucas is Near Threatened

The IUCN threat categories are (ranked in risk)

Extinct (EX)

Extinct in the Wild (EW)

Critically Endangered (CR)

Endangered (EN)

Vulnerable (VU)

Near Threatened (NT)

Least Concern (LC)

Six-eyed spiders

Brendan Moyle — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:01:57 +0000

Most modern spider families have 8 eyes. Within New Zealand however, there are three families that have 6 eyes. These are the tiny Oonopidae, the native Segestriidae and the introduced Dysderidae.

The Dysderids have one cosmopolitan species present- Dysdera crocata. This species is relatively common around its usual prey. This happens to be the garden slater (known elsewhere as the wood louse). The species has a very characteristic colouring. The cephalothorx and limbs are a striking red-orange colour, and the abdomen is cream. The chelicerae or fangs also appear to be disproportionately large, but the species is harmless.

I took a number of photos of one of these Dysderids this weekend. The setup was the Sony alpha a700, Sigma EM-140 ringlight flash, Tamron 90/2.8 macro lens with extra magnification from a 6x Raynox adapter.

#1 Getting the good side

Link to large image

#2 Dorsal view

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#3 Look, 6 eyes

Do our wildlife laws need reviewing?

Brendan Moyle — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:14:51 +0000

Following the conviction of three gecko smugglers in New Zealand, it was reported that Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson may overhaul wildlife laws after a German gecko smuggler was sentenced to 15 weeks jail and two other men admitted their roles in the smuggling operation.

While I’m not against stiffer penalties, anybody familiar with NZ laws is aware that the maximum penalties are very severe. Native wildlife is protected by the Wildlife Act, the Conservation Act if the animals are sourced there, the Trade In Endangered Species Act, and our Biosecurity Act.

The sanctions available to the courts are not inadequate. The real problem is that such sanctions cannot be set at levels that deter. Wildlife smuggling rings long ago, worked out that you can easily set up someone with low wealth to be your fall guy. So for tiger-parts into China, you just bribe a bus or train driver and pickup the stuff later.

If you want deterrence, the rule of thumb is that the expected sanction has to match or be greater than the reward. Let’s suppose you want to smuggle some NZ animals. You think there’s a 10% chance you’ll get caught, and you will be paid $50,000 for your part in the conspiracy. That means you’re balancing a ‘win’ of $50,000 against the 10% risk of being caught and fined. For the two choices to be equal, the courts would have to be giving out a fine of $500,000. They can’t and they don’t.

So, we know that sanctions have to be pretty high to deter wildlife smugglers. Therein is the problem. The guys that run these conspiracies pick people of poor wealth to take the risks. The courts can’t fine them enough to deter, because the couriers can’t pay those fines.

If we look at the 1993 Price Conspiracy- which smuggled birds into New Zealand from Australia, there were 6 conspirators. Three were unemployed, one was a sickness beneficiary, one was self-employed and one was an agriculturalist. The conspiracy moved Australian parrots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars into New Zealand in a small aircraft. Only one individual was fined ($5000) and the rest received jail terms of 6-12 months. The reason was simple- the conspirators didn’t have the wealth to fine to be a proper deterrent.

The fact is you can’t set fines and other criminal sanctions at a level that really deters. For decades, wildlife conspiracies have got around that problem by getting low-income people to take the risks. And courts can’t set sanctions on low-income people at a level that actually deters.

Where the NY Times Editorial on Tigers Goes Wrong

Brendan Moyle — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:27:49 +0000

The Feb 18 NY Times Editorial on conserving tigers, gets much of the issues wrong. Bear in mind, I have the almost unique pleasure of investigating the Chinese black market in a study over 2007-8 and this was published in a peer-reviewed study. In short, I do actually know what is going on in China.

One of the most intractable problems in species protection is the Chinese appetite for traditional medicines. … Despite bans — by China’s government and international agreements — on the sales of some materials and the near extinction of many of the animals used in traditional medicine, prices for animal parts continue to rise, and so do the incentives for poachers and sellers.

Good so far, note that bans are often claimed by conservationists to reduce demand. Not sure there is any evidence that tiger parts have increased in price as the data is too sparse and thinly spread to get any handle on that. But we do know the black market prices are high. So demand has not been addressed by this.

As The Times reported recently, one particularly horrifying practice is Chinese tiger farms, … In reality, their purpose is to raise tigers to be butchered and consumed.

Okay, I’m not entirely sure why tiger farms are specifically horrifying. Mostly the animals looked bored as there’s not a lot of enrichment activity. But other than that, they’re looked after (food, shelter, medicines) fairly well. Clearly the tigers are intended for commercial sale. And there is no problem in recognising that there has been ‘leakage’ from the Guilin farm. It is an entirely other thing to claim that this is a widespread activity sanctioned by authorities and something all other tiger farms do. It is fairly obvious that the Guilin farm is the only site in China that gets targeted for attention.

The tiger farms also do nothing to take pressure off the dwindling population of wild tigers. Chinese consumers believe parts from wild tigers have greater medicinal potency. In China, there are only some 20 wild tigers left. And Chinese demand — heightened by the farms and the beginning of the Year of the Tiger — has caused sharply increased poaching in India, which has only about 1,400 wild tigers left.

Ouch, there is absolutely no evidence that the tiger farms sustain demand by China for wild tigers. Most illegal traffic in tigers occurs in border regions away from the farms. There has been no illegal activity of wild tigers in the Guilin area. There has been a lot in Yunnan and Tibet where there are no farms.

Further, how many times do we have to point this out? India is the source of black-market tiger skins to the skin markets of central Asia (often Tibetans). The medicine markets in the east of China are largely supplied out of Indo-Chinese tigers. India hasn’t been losing tigers to medicine markets in China. They’re been losing them to decades-old skin markets.

Similarly, Indonesians who poach tigers for parts in the local markets, don’t care what someone in China is doing. The farms aren’t driving demand. It is centuries of culture in Asia of using tiger parts that drives demand.

The Chinese government seems to be doing little or nothing to shut down tiger farms or punish those who buy or sell tiger parts. …

This is just wrong. China has busted more conspiracies- with successful prosecutions- then the rest of Asia put together. When China does detect a conspiracy, the culprits have received severe penalties- up to and including death sentences.

It’s not China that has been lax with enforcement.

Unless China does both — shuts down the tiger trade and finds a way to alter consumers’ tastes — the wild tiger is almost surely doomed.

This completely misses the problem. Tiger farms are a minor issue. At best, they could alleviate some of the poaching pressure in Indo-China. At worst, they will have no impact on poaching. The reason is there is not a single black-market in Asia, and the black-market is not located solely in China. The black-market for tiger parts is diverse and operates in different markets and different countries.

The vast majority of the poaching episodes occurs as local peoples in range-states opt to kill them. That is probably where you need to be focusing efforts. The final markets are much harder to identify and target.

I wish people would stop getting so fixated on China’s tiger farms and actually look at realistic ways to crack these diverse black markets. Tiger farms are really a minor issue given the array of extinction forces currently facing tigers.

—–

I can recommend the following paper on the Chinese black market:

Brendan Moyle (2009) The black market in China for tiger products Global Crime, Volume 10(1): 124–143

Wildlife Economics: Modelling Reality

Brendan Moyle — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:05:32 +0000

One of the main problem ecologists and economists seem to get so frustrated with wildlife problems is where they begin.

In ecology, you tend to generate some pretty neat ecological models and everything that people do, ends up in a little box. This box is called disturbances. You generate some policy advice to the government, who for the most part, won’t implement these policies.

In economics, you start with goods that occupy well-defined markets, with secure property rights, with people already knowing why something is valuable. Now, in the course of modeling environmental problems you loosen these assumptions a bit. But there’s often no getting around the fact that a well-defined market is a convenient starting point.

What this all tends to miss, is the whole social, political and economic structures decisions about wildlife get made in. There is a very simple idea that there’s really only two players. There’s the government, a kind of virtuous generator of optimal policies to fix problems, and a bunch of private agents, all after a quick buck.

Once you actually start dealing with actual policy generation, then you realise that’s lot of different players. First, a lot of people who work for governments are pretty indifferent to wildlife management and not all averse to getting a quick buck (or not putting in any effort). Scientists can often agree that a policy is needed, but getting agreement on what that policy is, can be tough. The Federal Government in Australia was getting two contested policy options from scientists on crocodiles. And the options were mutually exclusive. You can’t reopen international trade and maintain a trade ban at the same time.

Governmental conservation organisations are still largely dominated by mammal and bird people. And that means a lot more funding ends up being channeled to charismatic species rather than those most in need. Tigers get money, but gharials don’t.

Then there’s the environmental NGOs. These are big players in conservation. They put a lot of money into conservation reserves and programmes in developing countries. They even acquire and manage reserves. These have become big, multinational, fund-raising organisations. With that size comes influence. NGO’s are able to influence the direction of conservation policies in many parts of the world.

What is so fascinating about this, is that there is so little research on the role of these NGOs. I think it is an important issue. We do need to know why big NGO’s are mad keen to save minke whales from whaling, but opt not to try to save the Chinese baiji. We need to know why a top predator like the tiger gets money thrown at it frantically, while another top predator- the gharial- languishes.

Then you also have local communities and other wildlife users. They’re another interested party to conservation policy. And we do know that regulations that end up shifting the cost of conservation measures on to them, tend not to be very successful. One of the problems with tigers is it doesn’t matter how many laws we pass to protect tigers. If local people get all the costs and risks of living next to 1/4 ton carnivores, then this is a setup that will only lead to less carnivores.

So my perspective is that this wildlife economics differs from say conservation or economics in terms of the direction. Rather than taking a small number of elegant, deductively correct and simplified models as the base, we look at the messy interaction that is actually happening. We end up by looking at the evidence, rather than trying to get the evidence to fit a narrow range of theories.

Herpetologist & Conservationist John Thorbjarnarson has died

Brendan Moyle — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:28:16 +0000

Aah, learned some very sad news.

Noted WCS conservationist John Thorbjarnarson died suddenly in New Delhi (yesterday). John was a tireless advocate for the scaly creatures- crocodilians, turtles etc- and played a very important role in the recovery of the Chinese alligator. This was one of the most remarkable turn-arounds in conservation in the last decade.

From John Robinson -

It is with real sadness that I must tell you that John Thorbjarnarson

tragically passed away early this morning. John was in New Delhi, India

after giving a course at the Wildlife Institute of India. He collapsed

yesterday and was taken to hospital. We got him into the best hospital and

he was given the best possible care, but by then it was too late. The

initial diagnosis is that he was suffering from advanced falciparum malaria.

We are in touch with the family and all relevant authorities. John was a

very special person and a great friend, who put his life and soul into

conservation. He will be widely missed and remembered.

Spur Winged Plover Photo

Brendan Moyle — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:21:52 +0000

In NZ, we have a relative of the lapwing. It’s merely a different (more southern) subspecies Vanellus miles novaehollandiae.

This is a rather noisy and somewhat aggressive bird. I’ve seen them chase off harrier hawks around the campus. It’s also self-introduced from Australia (trade winds tend to bring over potential colonists from Australia ever so often).

Given that it is self-introduced naturally (albeit the increase in suitable habitat from forest clearance was a big aid), there have been no campaigns to eradicate it. In NZ it tends to favour open grasslands- such as golf courses and the boundaries of air ports. This also means it’s becoming a more common source of bird-strikes on aircraft.

This bird here was photographed on Waiheke Island. It isn’t fully mature yet.

It’s a late afternoon photograph and consequently, I’ve had to boost the ISO on the camera to increase the shutter speed. (I should say that it isn’t my favourite Australian invader…)

Weka Photos

Brendan Moyle — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:26:11 +0000

As I have been thinking of wekas Galliralus australis of late, here’s a couple of photos of this threatened NZ rail:

NZ Weka Photo #1

Link to larger image

NZ Weka Photo #2

Link to larger image

This native rail to be fairly wide-spread, and growing up on the East Coast, it was pretty common. The species however has undergone some fairly major population contractions.

Wildlife Economics: The Data Problem

Brendan Moyle — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:13:42 +0000

After a while trying to port standard economic models into conservation, I began to give up. I know that some people still try and maybe get some useful insights. But by and large it seemed like a fairly unproductive line of research.

There seems to be a peculiar combination of factors that define wildlife management. None of these are necessarily unique to wildlife economics, but the combination makes for some major obstacles.

First up, there’s just no meaningful data. For most wildlife, we know very little about their actual populations, distributions and how they change. This makes it hard to just transfer models over from forestry or fisheries. Effectively, we get surprised an awful lot. We thought India had 4000 tigers in early 2007. Six months later, that was down to 1400. Tigers are actually a species people put a lot of effort into trying to monitor. Most species have almost no resources allocated to monitoring. I recall one study DoC did on Kapiti Island to look at the impacts of pest eradication on invertebrate populations. The study simply divided the animals into ‘big’ and ’small’ creepy-crawlies and was abandoned long before anything could be learned.

We’re still finding new species of vertebrates in rainforests, often of conservation concern. What makes things even messier, is that wild populations swing about a lot more than farmed. There aren’t the human managers trying to smooth things out. Birth and mortality rates are going to jump about.

Effectively any management model that tries to use a few of speculative data points is likely to be very unhelpful. What is of critical importance is our sheer ignorance of useful information about wildlife and the inevitable risk we will be surprised*.

In NZ we have been badly surprised by a couple of bird species. We used to think that the little spotted kiwi was doing okay with a robust, extant population on the West Coast. When we finally realised that population was gone, that left us with only 500 little spotted kiwis in all of NZ. Similarly the loss of the weka on the East Coast came as a surprise and meant the species was suddenly a lot more endangered. Sometimes we get good surprises- like the rediscovery of the takahe and taiko (both NZ birds that were thought to be extinct).

So ideally we need management approaches to wildlife that can cope with surprises. That may mean a more permissive approach to captive breeding. It almost certainly means don’t get locked into doing the same strategy. This is what is killing the tiger. For 30 years, we’ve been hoping the same strategy is suddenly going to start working. It also happened with the California Condor. Lock-in an in situ programme and watch the species decline, spurning all efforts to try out new ideas. Captive breeding of the condor was proposed back in the 1950s, but it took 30 years for it to be attempted.

In effect many models of wildlife management are actually quite demanding of data. This evades the big problem. The data isn’t there. We’re going to get surprised. How useful a model actually is comes down to its ability to incorporate surprises.

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* Some canny economists may recognise the influence of G S Shackle here