... reckless behaviour affecting the conservation of a Schedule 1 protected species
During
the Pacific campaigns of World War II, native peoples on many small
islands (now generally called Melanesia) came into contact with the
products of Japanese, and then Western, technological culture for the
first time. Aircraft and ships brought stockpiles of military
support supplies – tinned food, construction material, tents and
clothing - to the islands, which the inhabitants referred to as
“Cargo” - the pidgin word for trade goods. Then, as mysteriously
as they had arrived, the service personnel accompanying this logistic
effort vanished again, as the fortune of war ebbed and flowed across
the region.
They had observed the baffling rituals performed by the visitors, rituals which preceded the arrival of Cargo. Soldiers marched up and down on the beaches. Others lit fires in straight parallel lines, and then spoke while wearing curious headdresses connected to grey boxes. The islanders reasoned, logically, that if they performed these same rituals correctly, more Cargo would be sent to them. THAT was how the world of the Spirits had always operated, was it not?
“Cargo Cults”
In
certain areas of Wales, and also in the Scottish borders, some
misguided people have been running around the countryside, putting up
platform poles for “osprey nests”. The rationale behind this
seems plain enough: in the past, ospreys have nested on artificial
platforms, therefore many more platforms means many more ospreys will
come. Simple, innit?
Except
that it's not that simple at all.
We now know that population, dispersal, and nesting
dynamics in a recovering osprey population are complicated and have a
pattern of development that must be taken into account by any
responsible conservation plan. Low population density in a given
area means that male birds defend very large nesting territories.
Young birds returning to these areas disperse widely, often having to
cover hundreds of kilometres in their search for a mate and a
nest.
As (and if) the recovery proceeds normally, defended
territories become gradually smaller, pre-nuptial dispersal covers
shorter ranges, and more local nest sites are taken up. BUT it can
take several generations of birds for these changes to happen, and
ill-considered attempts to manipulate them cause problems: polygynous
nesting being only one of these.
Unplanned
platform deployment isn't conservation at all – it's Cargo Cult
Ecology.
These
hobbyist platform-builders do not understand the underlying processes
in a recovering osprey population. But unlike the rather smarter
south-sea islanders, they seem to have little or no interest in
finding out the real facts, preferring just to perform their Ritual
of Poles repeatedly in the superstitious hope that ospreys
will magically appear.
The
only things missing are the wooden headphones.
Source
material:
“Cargo
Cult: A
Melanesian Type-response to Culture Contact”
T. Schwartz, UCSD, 1968
“A Review of Thirty-five Years of
Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) Nesting Data in Rhode Island” E.S.
Walsh, University of Rhode Island, (2013)
“The
demography of a newly established Osprey Pandion haliaetus population
in France” Wahl,
Barbraud (2016)
doi: 10.1111/ibi.12114
“Distribution
pattern of an expanding Osprey (Pandion
haliaetus)
population
in a changing environment”
Bai, ML., Schmidt, D., Gottschalk, E. et al. J Ornithol (2009) 150:
255. doi:10.1007/s10336-008-0345-3
“Density
dependence in a recovering osprey population: demographic and
behavioural processes”
Bretagbolle V, Mougeot F, Thibault J-C, (2008)
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01418.x
