Good or bad PR? (1 Viewer)

[iraqbabbler]

Frankly, anyone who has a genuine passion for birds, and does not value, or respect individual birds in their own rite, consciously prepared to sacrifice the few, for data that 'might' be useful to us in the future, should not do it under the banner of (ethical and moral). Simply one person's opinion.
Colin

Hear hear :t:

 

[Qingcol]

If you have concerns about the usefulness of bird ringing then I would suggest the article "Is bird ringing still necessary" by Ian Newton in the October 2014 issue of British Birds (BB 107:572-574) is worth reading.

A good, although one-sided article, never once mentioning the true costs of continued, blanket ringing to bird populations.
In view of the natural, continual changes in our avifauna, I would argue that with the advent of satellite tags, continuing to blanket ring large numbers of birds with an average recovery rate less than the known casualty rate (For trapping alone) simply to amass a snapshot of data that, in reality could never be large enough to make any informed decisions, dressed up as demographic models of bird populations, or site-specific ringing-recapture programmes, no doubt would be extremely interesting to us, but in reality, we will never use for the true benefit of securing a bird species. That sort of meaningful benefit would require a genuine sacrifice on the part of all the human population, what chance then if organisations like the BTO refuse to adopt any meaningful change.
Colin