Can scientists help wildfowlers?

8 September 2011

What’s it all about?

On Wednesday 7th September a special workshop on the Sustainable Management of Migratory birds took place at a congress of the International Union of Game Biologists.  BASC’s Dr Conor O’Gorman, who is the UK’s representative to the IUGB, chaired the workshop together with Cy Griffin from the Federation of Associations for Hunting and Conservation of the EU (FACE). A summary of the discussion will appear soon.

What is the IUGB?

Every two years since the mid-1950s, the International Union of Game Biologists (IUGB) organises a congress to provide a forum for discussion on the latest research relating to game and wildlife management.  From 5-9 September the 30th IUGB congress is taking place in Barcelona and 400 attendees from 40 countries are attending.

From partridges to wild boar, a wide variety of topics are being discussed. Several presentations this year have coverered research on the killer tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis, a parasite that has yet to reach the UK.  BASC’s Dr Matt Ellis has given a presentation on “Management of waterfowl shooting during periods of severe weather in the UK”.

Click here to find out more about this year’s IUGB congress

Migratory birds workshop

The following briefing was circulated to all 400 attendees at the congress on Monday 5 September.

Across the world hunters invest a lot of time and money in habitat management and regulation of hunting for those migratory birds that they have an interest in. Those efforts also benefit many other species of plants and animals.

However, given that these huntable species are a resource shared between many different countries, how can hunters be confident that good management practice being applied in one country or region is not undone by poor or no management practice in others? How even to measure what is good management practice versus poor management practice? What if there is little or no knowledge about what is happening in a number of countries? Should research be prioritised based on the conservation status of migratory bird species?

These are just some of the questions that hunters and game biologists want to discuss rationally. Such opportunities for open dialogue are rare however, either because there is poor communication between research institutes and hunting organisations and/or because the protectionist movement has polarised the research community, the hunters’ community and other conservationists.

As such, joined up thinking on huntable species of migratory birds can be a challenging task.  The workshop will start with two short presentations, one from a hunter’s perspective, the other from that of a game biologist.

Participants will then be encouraged to give their own views, make suggestions, present ideas and formulate suggestions and proposals with the view to increase effectiveness of contacts and cooperation between hunters and game biologists.

What happens next?

A summary of the workshop findings will be presented to FACE and to its Members, and thus influence decision making within the context of the sustainable management and hunting of migratory bird species in Europe.

What you said

This topic was open to comments from BASC members from 1-14 September. The following comments were published.

At Last! In today's world of litigation,culpabilty and blame culture all shooters must ensure that they are seen to be proactive in their sport. If, by supporting this programme, shooters are seen to be preserving wildlife instead of just killing it the general perception of shooters will, hopefully, change. Anything that promotes this change of attitude must be good for the shooting community. Posted by Richard at 7 September 2011 12:22PM Hallelujah While many hunting groups, conservationists and researchers work together across the major european flyways; it is not accepted practice everywhere (in the UK for example). It should definately be encouraged. Ultimately to work more closely together it will require money, this may be able to come from national research councils but to start with I would like to see something simple such as more opportunities for hunters to support research financially or practically into bird survivial and movement via renewed support for and expansion of ringing schemes Posted by Tom at 2 September 2011 07:08PM

 

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