Re: [nysbirds-l] bird disturbance and 'photographers'

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:20:13 -0800

Hey Adam,

  I agree with all you said.  To hear someone complain vehemently that was onsite and did not take the initiative to approach the offenders and then not to even back you up and have the nerve of criticizing all photographers when they themselves are out there photographing the birds is really bold and inappropriate.  I wished I had been there yesterday as I would have loved to see the Snowy Owl and would have supported you completely.  Maybe if there was more than one person speaking up it would have made these folks realize that what they were doing was wrong and a difference could have been made.  We all can be part of the solution or part of the problem.  Its easy to bully one person that is trying to deliver the message.  Its a lot harder if a group of people jointly communicate considerately. 

  What you have written here makes complete sense to me.  By the way when I do photograph birds I use a big long lens to stay a good distance away and even like to be under cover next to a bush if it is not bothering other wildlife.  Thanks for being a voice of reason with actual experience of what happened yesterday.  I believe it says alot.  For those of you out there that think you are better than us all, do us all a favor, just stay to yourself and keep your big mouths shut.  You folks are part of the problem not the solution.

Greg
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Welz
Sent: Feb 6, 2012 2:18 PM
To: "NYSbirds-L@cornell.edu"
Subject: [nysbirds-l] bird disturbance and 'photographers'

Hi Phil & others

Your email brings up a number of points that merit discussion. I think that birds have far more serious problems than 'photographers', and I think your proposed approach of making bird details 'secret', and the approach followed by you and Rob Jett of photographing people and posting their details on the net can be harmfully counterproductive.

Here's why I think this:

1) With the net being what it is, there's nothing to stop anyone posting any details of any bird to any audience they choose. Cutting off one source of information will not stop information getting out.

2) North American birds are generally in decline not because of photographers, but because of habitat destruction, collisions with buildings, feral cats, poisons etc. -- in roughly that order. Addressing these issues means having political power, i.e. birds need people to be actively working for their interests in the broader political realm.

3) That's not to say that clueless or selfish photographers and birders don't sometimes do things that aren't in birds' interest.

4) The way to address the problems mentioned in 3 and 4 above is engagement -- get the word out about birds to the public at large, and sensitize photographers and birders to the needs of birds. "If a bird looks stressed and flies away from you, you're probably bothering it, and you should retreat", etc. These listservs are one way of engaging people, another great way is taking people out to see birds in a responsible way, and one can also engage photographers who are behaving inappropriately while they are doing it. We need more people to be out enjoying birds so that birds have a louder voice in the public arena. You can show people any number of photographs and tell them any number of facts about birds, but actually seeing and enjoying real live wild birds is far more powerful.

At the moment we have an awful, confrontational situation between certain members of the birding community who think of themselves as gatekeepers of information/sites/knowledge, and other birders and the public at large: I have stopped counting the number of people that have expressed their dismay to me at Rob Jett's aggressive approach of trashing strangers' reputations on the internet -- without even talking to them on site -- because it creates a feeling that birders are more like surveillance police than nature-lovers. Rob has done a lot of birding around NY and it's sad that he's alienated so many people with his attitude. Some people don't know that they're walking in a place they're not supposed to, and simply talking with them sorts a problem out. (Others are jerks and present somewhat more difficult challenges. I'm not proposing saying or doing nothing and maybe, ultimately, repeat offenders could benefit from some attention from law enforcement.)

Phil, you should also know that more and more people think of you as a hypocrite, trash-talking 'photographers' while yourself walking around with a massive lens. Surely the point is not that people are 'photographers' or 'photographer-birders' or whatever, but that they behave reasonably sensitively to birds? I've never really talked to you, and I don't know you, and I have no idea of your character, but I do know that when I approached the gentleman who you wrote about in your email, the one walking through the dunes after the Snowy Owl, you stood on by just a few yards away, saying nothing, while I engaged him on the fact that I'd seen him flush the owl and that walking through the dunes was not allowed. As it turns out the gentleman was extremely defensive/aggressive and the interaction did not go well, but I received no support from you -- you seemed to do your best to ignore what was going on at the time & emailing about it later. This makes you, sadly, seem like a coward. I hope to have the chance of forming a better, updated impression of you.

I understand that the previous two paragraphs might ruffle a few feathers, and that, as a relative newcomer to New York I'm doubtless going to be seen as insulting some of NYC's birding 'royalty'. I'm sorry if that's the case, but I've been part of different birding communities both within my home country and others, and having birded and researched birds over a period of 25 years on 5 continents, I feel I have some right to speak.

I think that the various birding listservs should be used as an opportunity to educate and engage people around birds and birding ethics. I think as many people as possible should be encouraged to bird, photograph birds, and celebrate them as possible -- in a responsible way -- because that's what's good for birds in the political realm, which is where we get to defend their habitats from destruction and encroachment. If the public at large don't know that amazing birds are living in a place, no-one's going to care when it gets paved over, and the best way to get them to care is if they see and experience the birds themselves. 'No Entry' signs and secretive, misanthropic birders are not welcoming to people at large, and do nothing for the cause of bird conservation.

Anyone who's studied birds seriously soon learns that many birds rapidly become accustomed to the disturbance regimes in their habitats, so, for example, approaching a Red-tailed Hawk in Central Park on foot does not disturb it, because it's become habituated to New Yorkers on foot & has learned that they're not dangerous. Walk up to a Red-tail in certain farming areas, and the bird might get spooked and fly away, because the local humans often shoot at Red-tails. Similarly, certain birds get accustomed to extremely noisy, low-flying aircraft, but get disturbed by people approaching silently on foot. Disturbance is context-specific and species-specific (some species seem to be extremely sensitive to disturbance in all situations). We need to recognise this and not simply say that approaching at an owl anywhere, for any reason, is bad. Birds' behavior is often the best guide, rather than a set of abstract rules. If a bird is flying off when you approach it, you're probably disturbing it. If it chooses to nest above a busy sidewalk, then walking beneath it will probably not bother it.

Some owls have no issues with people approaching them in a non-threatening way, like a pair of Spotted Eagle Owl I followed for years in Cape Town, has raised tens of young within a few yards of paths that carry hundreds of tourists a day in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. Google 'Spotted Eagle Owl Kirstenbosch' for some of the thousands of photos and videos of these birds that have been made over the years.

In conclusion, I'd like to advocate for a policy of openness and engagement, and I'd like to give an example of a situation in which this has worked. Some years ago I was doing research in the Little Karoo, a part of South Africa famed for rare succulent plants that were worth large amounts of money to foreign collectors. Some of these plants were in danger of becoming extinct due to foreigners digging them up and smuggling them out of the country. Local conservationists had a long debate as to whether to stop talking about the area being home to certain rare plants, or to publicize the plants and the threats to them. After seeing that silence wasn't stopping the illegal activity, it was decided to try publicity -- as a result, local people started to care about the plants, creating responsible tourist opportunities to see them but also looking out for unknown characters wandering about suspiciously where they were known to occur. As a result of some sharp-eyed locals speaking up, the local police for the first time apprehended plant smugglers -- including a well-known professor of botany from a prestigious Japanese university -- who were tried in court and found guilty of illegally removing protected species.

Obviously, in places where one cannot build up a community of engaged local people who care about wildlife, publicity might not be the way to go. But in NYC there are abundant opportunities for doing this -- I'd far rather see locals that walk the beach at Breezy Point with their dogs see, know and care about the local owls, than not know about them because of some 'veil of silence' drawn across the issue by some self-appointed birding 'royals'. I think unethical/clueless birders and photographers would be far less likely to walk in the sensitive dune area and mob an owl if locals and other birders talked to them and the owls were seen as a special thing for the area to celebrate and protect.

That's more than 2c on the topic. I hope to hear considered responses.

Cheers

Adam Welz

** NOTE ** When posting an earlier version of this email on ebirdsnyc, Phil Jeffrey barred me from 'his' list and publicly threatened to close the whole thing down, after which we engaged in a salty/rude email exchange -- just because of my brief criticism. I offered to sit down over a beer to sort things out, but he's chosen to call me 'delusional', while reminding me of his superior intelligence and 71 published academic papers. I obviously hit a nerve, which I take as an indication of the importance of this conversation. If you're going to post pictures of other birders on the net along with accusations regarding their behavior, I think you should be prepared to have your own behavior examined on the net. If you're also going to put yourself out as some sort of authority on birding, as Phil has through his blog and mentions in the NYTimes blog etc., it might help to recognise that you're not above criticism, and that others are going to be examining your behavior a little more intently than that of average birders' behavior.
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