Open Writing

On a recent visit to London, I took a day out of the city to visit Kew Gardens on the south bank of the Thames. For almost anyone, this is a magical place. Among these three hundred suburban acres is the largest plant collection in the world, spread across formal gardens, some unusual landscapes, and a number of carefully controlled environments such as the magnificent collection in the wondrous Palm House.

However, my main objective that day was not at all botanical; rather, I had set out to catch a glimpse of the ring-necked parakeet. Eh? Surely some mistake? But no; summer or winter, these unmistakably tropical birds with their startling green plumage, can be seen flying straight and fast in groups of up to a hundred or more. In London!

Indeed these aviary escapees have adapted well to their new environment (without, it seems, impacting adversely on other species) and are now prolific breeders, exceeding two thousand in the south of England.

Their increase is a spectacular contrast to many other British birds which are clearly in trouble. There is no doubting that birds which were once as common as muck in UK, are now in serious decline. Thanks to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), an active membership, and the cooperation of landowners , there have been some noteworthy successes in turning the tide on some of the most threatened birds – for example, the Osprey, the Corncrake (until recently almost extinct in Britain) and Bitterns, to name but a few. But alarmingly, house sparrows, starlings, song thrushes, skylarks, lapwings, snipe and many others, continue to fall so rapidly that scientists are at a loss to exactly pinpoint the causal factors in each case.

Birds are a good indicator of environmental health. That is why we should all be concerned when we see their numbers collapse. Changes in land use, increasing (and often unnecessary) application of pesticides and chemicals (including inour gardens), the impact of climate change on food sources, cat predation (there are five million moggies in UK), and sometimes appalling human ignorance, all contribute to birds’ demise. To illustrate the latter point, one need look no further than game keeper poisoning of reintroduced red kites in Britain. Or after painstakingly hard work to reestablish peregrine falcons in British skies, the misguided idiot in Northern Ireland who shot thirty of these magnificent raptors, because he feared they were preying on his homing pigeons!

Of course we aren’t so brain dead here in South Africa. Or are we? I began to doubt this conviction after touring in Lesotho last year. Once back in SA, I stopped at a farm guest house about 17 kilometres outside Queenstown. The same afternoon, I was having a friendly chat with my host who offered advice about a local bird walk. Returning late in the afternoon, I’d been delighted. Included in my count was a Gymnogene, only a few hundred metres from the farmhouse. Ten minutes later I heard a shot. Imagine my horror when the farmer’s son emerged with his quarry. The Gymnogene.

I truly wonder what motivates we humans to shoot, trap, poison and maim at will. What pleasure can we possibly take from this? In Knysna last year, someone living in the Eastford area shot a Spotted Eagle Owl on its nest while it brooded newly hatched chicks. Congratulations, whoever you were. Fortunately, the vast majority of South Africans love nature and would unreservedly condemn such callousness. Nevertheless, when push comes to shove, people tend to be care-neutral, for want of a better phrase. “Better not say anything”. “Don’t get involved.”

We can also be thoughtless, can’t we? Little Johnny wants an air rifle for his fourteenth birthday. To compensate for the arrival of spots on his face, we accede to his wishes. When we’re not looking he uses birdsfor target practice. In fact, we are, none of us, immune from carelessness. Angling is a popular sport, and a skilled one at that. But how often do we spot seabirds lying dead on our shores, tangled in discarded line? The dreaded stuff seems to be everywhere.

Encouraged by the dreadful Jeremy Clarkeson and others of his ilk (who shamelessly joke about “roadkill”) we aspire to faster and more powerful cars which can take us from A to B cocooned with our CD players and oblivious to the bird carnage we create. Regular cyclists on the N2, on any day of the year, will observe something that motorists cannot – dozens of dead Cape Robins, Olive Thrushes, White Eyes, Boubous, Fiscal Shrikes, Guinea Fowl, Sunbirds and many other species; snuffed out by our haste. It is likely that more than a million birds are killed in this way every year, in
South Africa alone.

And let’s not forget the unseen damage. A recent Greenpeace report referred to “poor planning, local corruption, and the flaunting of environmentalguidelines.....turning (our) coast line into a deep ulcer of urban development which is polluting our beaches and poisoning our sea....The swathe ofholiday homes, hotels and golf courses spreading across our coasts are rapidly destroying ecosystems the country relies upon for tourism”. You might be surprised that the report was referring to Spain. But you might as well substitute “Garden Route” which now seems doomed to the same end.

How long will it be, I wonder, before our remaining wildlife has nowhere else to go? Knysna residents might well ask this question of Joy Cole and her team, whose preoccupation with “growth” is alarming and may ultimately prove the town’s undoing.

In Britain at least, there are powerful lobby groups such as RSPB whose membership is counted in millions. They are capable of bringing influence to bear. Birdlife SA is the nearest equivalent here. It does a lot of useful education and training, working in schools and in cooperation with businesses, and undertaking special projects like those designed to save the albatross from drowning on the long lines of ocean going vessels. However it doesn’t have the resources to buy up, conserve or convert land for the benefit of birds (and other wildlife) in the same way that RSPB is capable. That is hardly surprising when one considers that Birdlife SA’s national membership is a mere 8,000 committed souls. Come on folks. For R195 (twenty Rand cheaper for senior citizens) you can join them and help make a difference. Visit their website www.birdlife.org.za for further details.

Unless we give such organisations financial clout, we can expect our bird heritage to sink much lower in years to come. God forbid, but perhaps some of South Africa’s more vulnerable species will only be found in cages in future. Which brings me sadly back to parakeets. The other day as I emerged from PickNPay, a saw a little boy running towards me, propelled along by a pot bellied man whom I assumed to be his father. The excited youngster had come outof the local pet shop and was carrying a tiny cage. Stuffed into this were two parakeets which were jostled and panicked with the boy’s every step.

His father seemed entirely unconcerned. What a fate for any creature. Confined for the rest of its days. I couldn’t help wishing that those birds would escape and procreate – just like their distant pioneer cousins in Kew Gardens.