Citizens, science and bird conservation

Abstract

Collaborative research by networks of amateurs has had a major role in ornithology and conservation science and will continue to do so. It has been important in establishing the facts of migration, systematically recording distribution, providing insights into habitat requirements and recording variation in numbers, productivity and survival, thus allowing detailed demographic analyses. The availability of these data has allowed conservation work to be focussed on priority species, habitats and sites and enabled refined monitoring and research programmes aimed at providing the understanding necessary for sound conservation management and for evidence-based government policy. The success of such work depends on the independence of the science from those advocating particular policies in order to ensure that the science is unbiased. Wetland birds are surveyed in much of the world. Most countries also have a ringing scheme. Other forms of collaborative ornithology are strong in North America, Australia and Australasia, more patchily distributed in Asia (but with strong growth in some countries) and even patchier in Africa and South America. Such work is most successful where there is a strong partnership between the amateurs and the professional, based on their complementary roles. The participation of large numbers of volunteers not only enables work to be done that would otherwise be impossible but also facilitates democratic participation in the decisions made by society and builds social capital. The recruitment to and subsequent retention of people in the research networks are important skills. Surveys must be organized in ways that take into account the motives of the participants. It is useful to assess the skills of potential participants and, rather than rejecting those thought not to have adequate skills, to provide training. Special attention needs to be paid to ensuring that instructions are clear, that methods are standardized and that data are gathered in a form that is easily processed. Providing for the continuity of long-term projects is essential. There are advantages to having just one organization running most of the work in each country. Various sorts of organizations are possible: societies governed by their (amateur) members but employing professional staff to organize the work seem to be a particularly successful model. Independence from government and from conservation organizations is desirable.

Appendix: Reprinted from McCrimmon and Sprunt (1978)

The role of organisation in field ornithology. Some notes based upon the BTO’s experience. Prepared by E.M. Nicholson, 27 January1978

• 1. Much detailed and valuable experience now exists concerning the functions and successful operation of such a body as the British Trust for Ornithology once it is firmly established. That experience is widely shared and is current knowledge, the tapping of which in any desirable form should be a straightforward process. It will not be discussed in these notes, which concentrate upon the complementary problem of initiating such an organisation and programme in circumstances when it is strange and novel both to those seeking to develop it and to those to whom they look for support. To a substantial extent the shape of this initial problem must vary greatly according to national and cultural traditions, the stage of development already reached, and the immediate aims and activities envisaged, which may be modified considerably over the years of operating experience. Specifically, these notes will seek to distil, from the embryonic and growth stages of the B.T.O., points which may be helpful in the case of some kind of parallel effort in North America.

• 2. This problem may be outlined under four heads:

  • 2.1 What needs to be done which calls for a new organisation?

  • 2.2 What kind of structure, resources and methods are called for?

  • 2.3 What is the existing climate of opinion, institutional background, population of ornithologists and bird-watchers, and relationship of ornithology to other activities, into which any new initiative must fit?

  • 2.4 Apart from such points as can be expressed in generalised terms, what particular experiences in the evolution of B.T.O. may be of special relevance?

  These points can be dealt with only briefly here, but further information can be added if required.

• 3. Taking first 2.1, and assuming a general aim to learn as much about birds as possible, both for its own sake and to serve other ends, we may distinguish among others, the fields of:

  • 3.1 Population census, inventory, distribution, habitat and territory.

  • 3.2 Migration, movements, mortality, seasonal status, and use of banding.

  • 3.3 Behaviour, social pattern, communications/voice, pairing.

  • 3.4 Identification, plumage, distinctive field characters.

  • 3.5 Food and methods of foraging, nutrient requirements.

  • 3.6 Anatomy, taxonomy, moults, age and sex differences, evolution.

Some of these, e.g. 3.5 and 3.6, are mainly subjects for professionals; others, e.g. 3.1 and 3.2, can be greatly furthered by amateurs, while within a broad intermediate zone professional/amateur collaboration, if well conceived, directed and executed, can be of much value. If friction, abortive effort and misunderstandings are to be avoided, it is essential at the outset to ensure that any organization, partly or wholly based on amateur co-operation, involves a realistic and acceptable assignment of roles between professionals and amateurs, bearing in mind that the latter span many different types with widely divergent interests, capabilities, time, mobility and attitudes.

Apart from increasing knowledge for its own sake, what needs to be done ranges from satisfying practical conservation needs such as inventory of habitats and species on threatened areas or monitoring annual and season fluctuations in numbers, to many kinds of comparative studies between species and between areas, observing patterns of activity, obtaining specific data or material in support of particular researches and countless other projects or surveys.

The breadth and intensity of support for these will vary according to the effectiveness with which their significance and techniques are explained, the results digested and published or communicated and a sense of teamwork and comradeship established among those taking part. Sound and desirable projects have often wilted through lack of sustained attention to such aspects.

A need for a new organisation is not established merely by listing a number of functions which it might serve or tasks which it might do. To be successful, it must quickly create its own identity, a dynamic and loyal support base and win the respect if not the love of pre-existing bodies which it may overlap or at least impinge upon. The strength of a voluntary body is no more than the strength of its inner group of prime movers, not singly but as a close-knit united team. Those, however gifted and keen, whose personality unfits them for sustained, confidential end highly productive relationships are best omitted or placed in sufficiently self-contained positions to minimise personality clashes at the centre.

• 4. This leads on to the problem 2.2 of structure, resources and methods. Taking first:

  • 4.1 Structure, the choice is wide and must be decided by tastes and circumstances, but in field ornithology it is desirable to provide for a high degree of devolution of responsibility accompanied by regular but not too frequent accountability for resources used and results obtained. A lively and vigorous movement is best promoted by careful recruitment, clear broad guidelines and encouragement to as many participants as possible to seek or accept some kind of leadership rule, even if localised or specialised. A passion for tidy hierarchies, excessive co-ordination or bureaucracy, and the needless damping down of enthusiasm tend to incur costs much exceeding their benefits in terms of organic growth.

  • 4.2 Whether or not it is desirable to be liberally funded from the start, which may be questionable, most new organisations have for a time partly to lift themselves by their own boot-straps. In moderation this can be healthy, but while weeding out the fainthearted, and other undesirables, it can also tie down many talented or expert man-hours in routine chores and narrow down the core group much too drastically. It is highly desirable to secure one or more participants, often without specialised qualifications or knowledge, who will cheerfully pursue the winning of financial and other resources, and will imbue the whole body with a sense of deserving and knowing how to secure essential support.

  • 4.3 As to methods, an amateur composition does not excuse amateurish standards and practice. It is essential that knowledgeable and often professional assistance should be obtained in designing, monitoring and assessing results of projects, and in overcoming snags.

• 5. Passing on now to 2.3 it cannot be too much emphasised that the most exacting task in launching an organisation of a new kind in a field where plenty of different organisations already exist is to address the right kind of message in the right style and tone to the right people and organisations essential to successful launching. Looking now, for example, at the British Trust for Ornithology, it is hard to explain what is involved in recruiting for such a body the first few hundred ornithologists and bird-watchers who have never seen or heard of anything of the kind, and appeasing and conciliating innumerable critics who are sure either that all was well before or that something quite different was needed, or that the new enterprise has got into the hands of a bunch of incompetents/cranks/impractical idealists/inexperienced outsiders and so forth.

Learning the hard way which are the passengers and who are the doers and dedicated helpers, which subjects are winners and which are greeted with glassy eyes, and what kinds of inquiries combine usefulness with attractiveness and practicability are among many other interesting experiences which await the hardy promoters of such an enterprise. If they neglect such background and climatic factors, they do so at their own peril.

• 6. While the above notes are derived from the early struggles of the British Trust for Ornithology, a few specific points in its experiences are worth mentioning. While it failed for much too long to take the advice given in the last sentence of 4.2, it was extremely fortunate from the start in attracting a galaxy of respected leaders with strong followings in existing societies who lent not only their names but their wise counsel and active influence to bringing in support and neutralising objections.

It benefited also from a series of previous “dry runs” such as the Census of Heronries, the Oxford Bird Census and the Oxford University Research in Economic Ornithology which built up a partially trained and like-minded group of pioneers with some common background for the task.

It should be noted that outside Museums there were at the Trust’s foundation virtually no paid professional ornithologists in the UK; later experience suggests that had they pre-existed they would at best have been a drag and at worst an insuperable barrier to launching it. After the first twenty years, the substantial funding of the Trust on a more or less permanent basis as a national “chosen instrument” for certain lines of biological research, and the bringing in of a suitable professional to head the team went far to bridge the uneasy gap between professional and amateur.

From the outset the B.T.O. has recognised the importance of development at the grassroots through the country. Without that element it could have been almost stultified.

Many thought that individual observers would not take kindly to being organised and that would have been true if they had not continually been shown impressive results which could have been obtained in no other way, and been helped to become a lively brotherhood rather than a scattered tribe of cliques and loners. It was the sense of status, of participation and of solid achievement which, after several setbacks, got the B.T.O. going and, incidentally, converted “bird-watcher” from a standing joke to a widely admired type.