New study about C malherbi

Georg · Snr Member Joined: Jul 12, 2009 Posts: 174

I saw in FB a link to a new Study about the population of the orangefrontet parakeet on maude-island.
Here is the link: http://ow.ly/g5hGW

Georg

Steptoe · Site Admin Joined: Oct 06, 2004 Posts: 4550

We have the PhD experts now certain on the sucess of captive breed kakariki release in the wild....
Something we amatures have known for decades..like the orange was a different species, and basically made critically endangered by the 'experts' active in killing them off..... considering amatures like us know nothing, right?
So the real main hurdles are not that captive breeding release is viable, but getting such species, under Dept Conservation control, mass breed by experianced amatures, at little cost to the taxpayer and release into even non preditor free enviroments.
We are in a major budget cutting economic envorioment, and all the Dept Conservation is worried about is being able to maintain staff funding, and maintain the very expensive breeding programs for critically endangered species... reptiles, birds, fish insects...
Or put another way, maintaining expensive little empires.
The possiblity that the Dept could think out of the square is way too much to expect...

Last year I had a display at the NZ Federation of Bird Clubs Annual conference and Show....I unoffically asked a lot of the breeders there.
Keep in mind these guys have decades of experiance in breeding easy exotic birds to highly endangered hard to keep and breed exortic birds.
"If DoC came to you with a breeding pair, would you breed them for Free to supply conservation projects?"
I got 2 answers...
1/ " Hell yeah"
2/ " I have just retired and could not realy afford to, down sizing"
"What if DoC offered u a few bags of seed a yr?" $100, maybe $150 dollars worth... retail.
"Hell yeah"

So I ask why the hang are we maintaining expensive breeding programs, AND have DoC continuusly complaining (even pre economic crisis) about funding shortages....when millions, yes millions of dollars of taxpayer money could be saved... or redirected to maintain the little empires built up in the beuocracy of DoC.?
We have expert amature breeders in reptiles, insects , fish, birds , many already very familar with NZ endagered spcies and breed successfully now....only they are required by Law/ DoC policy to kill them... 1000s of them...

I have meet Dr Luis Ortiz-Catedral during his studies in NZ, he is one of the very few, handful of quaified , PHD people that I have great respect for. The hoops, and years he had to go thru just to even start his project was unbelivable.....captive breeding/ release threatens lucative tax payer projects and maintains endangered, not at risk at this piont in time, species in this country...

We have the expertises and labour for volunteers to plant trees, clear invasive weeds....we also have on a similar basis in NZ the expertes, and facilties to have volunteers to breed our endangered and non endangered birds, fish, replitles in the same manner....