Facts Matter in Conservation; Be Careful about Making Claims
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FROM Barry Kent MacKay, BornFreeUSA.org
October 2019

We normally gravitate toward information that supports what we want to believe while ignoring demonstrably accurate information to the contrary... There will always be deniers for whom no amount of evidence will convince them of what they choose not to believe. But, we must try not to fuel their biases.

Whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus hudsonicus) - Art by Barry Kent MacKay

For decades, since I first started looking in the late 1950s, I have discussed the decline in birds in my region. I helped conduct bird censuses in southern Ontario 50 years ago, in specific habitats, and can say categorically that those same habitat types now have depleted populations of species that, under the direction of a university professor carefully conducting transects, we tabulated back then.

So, when a series of articles referenced the loss of three billion birds, as determined by a recently published scientific study, arrived in my e-mail inbox last week, I was inclined to say “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

During my youth, the Savannah sparrow was the most abundant local field bird, and now I can visit the same type of habitat and see few or none. Thus, I was not surprised to read that, according to the new report, some 750 million of the group of birds to which that species belongs, the “American sparrows,” had vanished over that same 50 year period.

Shorebirds and birds that eat mostly flying insects, have also experienced significant decreases. A five hour drive through central Ontario that I took a few years ago produced less than a dozen swallows, while on that same drive, just couple of decades earlier, at the same time of year, I saw thousands.

But, I do have a lingering, perhaps heretical, concern. In reducing a detailed study to news accounts, figures are bandied about that could come back to haunt the conservation movement. It is not that there are not dire issues or that the original study is not fundamentally correct. Indeed, based on what we know the situation could well be, or become, worse than the researchers determined.

Next in my daily e-mails I read a brief e-mailed note to the effect that all birds species in the arctic are in danger of extinction.

Um, no. Even with the horrific effects global warming is already having on the arctic, quite a few bird species such as horned larks, ravens and, yes, even Savannah sparrows, nest over vast areas in many different climates and habitats. Fortunately I saw no more references to that erroneous prediction.

But, I did see, still reading my day’s e-mail, a reference to the number of animals in trade, in one e-mail, referencing a peer-reviewed scientific paper in a prestigious journal. That was immediately followed by a critique.

Here we have a complex and extremely serious issue, the international wildlife trade, that has horrific implications for wildlife conservation, being misinterpreted in ways the general public, and journalists, are not likely to recognize. Put simply, the authors of the first paper assumed that all species listed on Appendices I and II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) are in trade. Most are, and some of that trade (not all) either already does, or in the future may, put species at risk of endangerment leading to extinction. But, the efforts to prevent that are not helped by over-stating a situation that is dire enough, since the errors will be used to discredit genuine concerns.

I have no solution. We are not good at weighing risks and we are not good at understanding statistics generally and statistical probabilities particularly. We normally gravitate toward information that supports what we want to believe while ignoring demonstrably accurate information to the contrary. We have short attention spans and limited time to assimilate the complex knowledge necessary to better understand issues relating to conservation and environmentalism.

Climate change is happening, trade and a myriad of other human actions really do drive animal and plant species toward extinction, and we really and truly have lost a lot of birds (and insects, fish, and other wildlife species). There will always be deniers for whom no amount of evidence will convince them of what they choose not to believe. But, we must try not to fuel their biases.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry

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