Where the Winds Blow
Asia stretches from the banks of the Bosphorus in the west, to the north and west coasts of Australia, so it covers a huge expanse of the world. Book 2 of the series, 'Where the Winds Blow' is focussed on China, and the Philippines. In China I discovered just how strong my liver was, how to say 'sorry! in Mandarin, what to do when you find a several hundred dead deer inside a protected area, and how do you solve the problem.
The Philippines section of the book covers forest conservation - how to work with armed guerillas, the creation of inter-tidal mudflats along the East Asia-Australia Flyway, tackling the illegal wildlife trade in reptiles and birds and meeting some of the friendliest people in the world who live in areas of high conservation value. As the shift in global focus has moved from species conservation to climate change (which has been painful for the wildlife conservationist), Neil describes what it's like to work on a Mindanao project that - in theory - helps protect wildlife through forest conservation, but in practice struggles to achieve its objectives. The Philippines is the fourth most biodiverse country on Planet Earth, with species yet to be discovered. That said, through my travels I reduced this number of 'unknowns' by one; read the story of the discovery of a new species of phasmid during a trek across the last remaining forests of Negros.
Extract from 'Where the Winds Blow
The world of the bird expert is mystifying. At least to me. I find all animals and plants, (and yes, fungi as well), quite miraculous. And it is not unusual to find deeply committed, passionate advocates for every species of organism, from aardvarks to zebra, cacti to orchids, lawyers’ wigs to yellowleg bonnet. Within the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), there are ‘Specialist Groups’, which can be taxon- or species-focussed, such as crocodiles, orchids or primates, or theme-based, such as sustainable livelihoods or conservation planning. I have been a member of several of these specialist groups for many years and it’s fair to say that the members of the SG (who are all volunteers) have a mountain of knowledge between them.
But ‘birders’ – people who spot and watch different types of bird - are like no other group of people that I have come across. At the pinnacle of avian enthusiasm sit the ‘twitchers’, who will go to extraordinary lengths to see a species that they haven’t seen in the wild before. Their enthusiasm is only matched by their bird-spotting ability, and I have often been staggered by their ability to identify a flashing blob of feathers to a particular species, and even more flabbergasted when a faint chirp or a cheep is greeted with something along the lines of
“Yes, that’s a Visayan flowerpecker. Obvious, isn’t it?” Then a quick scan of nearby foliage with binoculars, a steady gaze, followed up with something along the lines of:
“There it is, pink-flowered shrub, sitting at two o’clock, and mouse-eared pontificating jungle fowl just below it.” (okay, I made that last one up, but you get my drift; these are experts of the stellar kind).
Left to my own I would perhaps spot a movement in the bush, but by the time I fumbled my bins to my eyes and adjusted the focus, the speck of life would have flown away, without any clue to what had been there.
Nowadays, with smartphones and software such as Merlin make it possible to record and identify birds of all types across the globe, but before then (and still more accurate, in my experience), the knowledge, ability and - above all - the dedication to their subjects - in passionate birdwatchers is like no other. The rise in membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (over one million), the number of people in the US who declare that they enjoy ‘birdwatching (over one hundred million) and the growth of Birdlife International, a global partnership of ornithological clubs (there are currently one hundred and twenty three partners within Birdlife International) are all proof to the draw of ‘Class Aves’.
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One of the star attractions at Bristol Zoo Gardens was a walk-through aviary, which contained various types of bird only from Southeast Asia. It was named the ‘Wallace Aviary’, a testimony to the work of Alfred Wallace (1823-1913) who proposed a theory of evolution around the same time as Charles Darwin, but didn’t manage to publish his theories before Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’, the latter which effectively changed the world view on the evolution of life. The Wallace Aviary was highly popular with zoo visitors, and it helped that internally, an interest in passerines (perching birds) was headed up by the General Curator, a no-nonsense Yorkshireman who was also a no-nonsense birder. It was through him that I met a guy called William Oliver, and my longtime connection with Southeast Asia, and the wonderful world of the Philippines in particular, began.
I first met William when he was doing a tour of the UK. His modus operandi was to travel from his base in Manila to update a whole raft of supporters that he’d put together to fund Philippine biodiversity conservation, or more precisely, the NGO that he had set up in the Philippines to work on species conservation there, creatively entitled the Philippines Biodiversity Conservation Foundation, Inc. (which, like most wildlife conservation organisations, was known by its acronym, PBCFI). William lived in Malate, Manila, and worked tirelessly to safeguard endangered Philippines species from extinction. His personal journey through life was one of stellar highs and desperate lows. He had an animated, engaging character, which could enthuse, charm, offend or provoke almost to blows. He was an incredibly talented artist, a free-wheeling, creative spirit, with a soul that seemed to have been forged in Dante’s Inferno. His personal story tale is worth knowing, because it impacts on much of the early work I did in the Philippines, and more of William later.
Bristol Zoo’s flagship birds were the five species of bleeding-heart dove (at the time I was there, there has since been a sixth species identified). These ground-dwelling pigeons are highly distinctive because of their striking chest feathers. As the name implies, each one of the bleeding-heart doves have a patch of red, or crimson feathers on their chest. They are found only in the Philippines, with each species being endemic to just one island. These are now Mindanao, Negros and Panay, Luzon, Mindoro and Sulu, with each species named after the islands where they are found.
One of William’s main strategies for garnering support for Philippines’ species was to partner with credible zoo-based organisations, and offer them the opportunity to ‘own’ one or two species in the Philippines that they could promote this ‘unique’ connection to their own zoo-visitors. In this he was clearly ahead of his time. Several decades later, it became a de facto situation for major zoos in the world: each zoo would have their ‘own area’, or ‘own species’ highlighted within their zoological collection, to showcase their personal contributions to global conservation. Not just the Philippines, although William was one of the earliest conservationists to promote these connections between ex-situ (captive) animals, and in-situ individuals, and he heavily promoted the potential links.
