TASMANIA: SWIFT PARROTS FACING POPULATION COLLAPSE

Tasmania´s Swift Parrot (Lathamus discolor). Source: Wikipedia.

Source: ANUchannel
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The iconic Tasmanian swift parrot is facing population collapse and could become extinct within 16 years, new research has found.

The researchers have called on the Federal Government to list the birds as critically endangered.

"Swift parrots are in far worse trouble than anybody previously thought," said leader of the study, Professor Robert Heinsohn, from The Australian National University (ANU).

"Everyone, including foresters, environmentalists and members of the public will be severely affected if they go extinct," said Professor Heinsohn from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society.

Swift parrots are major pollinators of blue and black gum trees which are crucial to the forestry industry, which controversially continues to log swift parrot habitat.

The five-year study discovered that swift parrots move between different areas of Tasmania each year to breed, depending on where food is available.

The new data was combined with a previous study that showed that swift parrots are preyed on heavily by sugar gliders, especially in deforested areas.

The research predicted that the population of the birds will halve every four years, with a possible decline of 94.7 per cent over 16 years.

A moratorium on logging in swift parrot habitat is needed until new plans for their protection can be drawn up, said co-researcher, Dr Dejan Stojanovic, also from ANU Fenner School.

"Current approaches to swift parrot management look rather inadequate," he said.

"Our models are a wake-up call. Actions to preserve their forest habitat cannot wait."

The research has been published in the latest edition of Biological Conservation.

SPAIN: SLAUGHTERING MIGRATING BIRDS WITH GLUE TRAPS

                       BIRD LOVERS IN SPAIN WAKE UP!!!!

Source: Animal Liberation Front.com

Stop the killing of millions of birds migrating to Spain. They face painful deaths in glue-filled traps! Up to four million migrating birds will be killed by illegal Spanish hunters this year, with many dying a slow, sticky death in traps that literally glue the animals to the ground, according to campaigners.

 

 

                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSOAMZ5gJqE&feature=player_embedded     

                        
                                      

                                

Hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters in Castellon, eastern Spain, and neighbouring areas will have already set their so-called parany traps - copses filled with glue-covered twigs and spikes.

Hunting of song and mistle thrushes and their cousin the redwing is not illegal, but the methods used are, despite attempts by legislators to introduce exceptions.

 

Campaigners say the painful deaths suffered by the birds, whose wings are glued together before their necks are broken or their heads squashed, contravene European wildlife laws.

"There have been sentences against this in the courts in Madrid and at the European court in Luxembourg," said Mario Gimenez, head of SEO/Birdlife in the eastern region of Valencia.

 

Up to two of every five birds that fall into the parany traps will not be thrushes. Hundreds of thousands of other migrating insectivores such as robins, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and black redstarts will die.

Local birds, including warblers and owls, also fall prey to the parany trick. Many birds are listed as threatened at a European and/or international level. Nowadays bird trapping takes place at an unprecedented scale, killing hundreds of thousands of birds for profit, and it is controlled by a network of ruthless criminals.

 

Campaigners say it is time politicians, whose attempts at legalising the traps in Valencia's regional parliament have been stymied by Spain's higher courts, publicly disavow a tradition that contravenes EU law.

But protecting local traditions wins votes in rural areas where setting and emptying traps may also involve evenings or weekends of food, drink and partying.

 

A clear and welcome "zero tolerance" message came out of the "European Conference on Illegal Killing of Birds", held in Larnaca last July (2011).

 

We, the undersigned, now call for the political will that was evident at the conference to be transformed into action on the ground to stop the slaughter of birds in Spain.

 

This ecological disaster must be stopped.

 

I ask that real enforcement of the legislation is applied at all levels and that deterrent court fines are imposed to convicted trappers.

 

Campaigners fear that with a change in Spain's government due after a general election on 20 November, authorities will once more turn a blind eye to illegal hunting of migratory birds.

"The People's party is expected to win, and that is the same party that has tried to legalise this in Valencia," said Gimenez. "We don't want a new government turning the clock back."

 

I hope that you will do whatever is possible within your powers to eliminate illegal bird trapping in Spain.

 

Yours sincerely,

Chantal Buslot
Belgium

http://testigocristianodejehova.over-blog.es/article-cuatro-millones-de-pajaros-mueren-al-a-o-en-espa-a-en-trampas-85469542.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/04/birds-migrating-spain-killed-hunters?fb=optOut