Moments after taking the first photograph ever of a creature so rare it has been described as a “ghost bird”, one researcher tracked down the rare bird and immediately killed it–an act he claims was for science, but one which has outraged some conservationists.
The man at the center of the controversy is Chris Filardi, the director of Pacific Programs at the American Museum of Natural History, and the creature in question is called the male mustached kingfisher–a bird that can only be found in the Solomon Islands, according to Yahoo News.
The male mustached kingfisher had not been seen for more than half a century until Filardi found one living on the isle of Guadalcanal, the New York Daily News reported on Monday. According to Filardi, he killed the creature to study it as a specimen. The practice, known as “collecting”, is frequently used to study more common species of birds.
“Although sightings and information about the bird are rare in the ornithological community, the bird itself is not,” he told reporters. “As I wrote from the field, this is a bird that is poorly known and elusive to western science – not rare or in imminent danger of extinction.” The IUCN Red List, however, disagrees and calls it an endangered species, stating that less than 1,000 adults remain.
Ecologists, activists call Filardi’s actions “cruel” and “horrific”
Nonetheless, the move sparked outraged from many animal conservation groups, as well as the general public, many of whom have compared Filardi’s actions to the recent killing of Cecil the Lion by American dentist and big-game hunter Walter Palmer. Among the groups condemning his actions is PETA.
In an email sent to the Daily News, PETA Senior Director Colleen O’Brien said that it was a “tired and nonsensical, self-serving claim that you must kill some animals in the name of research so as to study them enough to save them. This argument is as daft as Walter Palmer saying he shot Cecil the lion with a high-powered crossbow to save other lions.”
O’Brien added that it was “perverse” and “cruel” to track down and find “an animal of a rare species… only to kill him.” In a defense published by the Audubon Society, Filardi wrote his decision to collect the specimen was “neither an easy decision nor one made in the spur of the moment” and emphasized that it “was not a ‘trophy hunt.” Rather, he said that his goal was to document the species and to advance a conservation strategy to help protect it.
In a piece for the Huffington Post, University of Colorado ecology and evolutionary biology professor Marc Bekoff wrote, “Killing ‘in the name of conservation’ or ‘in the name of education’ or ‘in the name of whatever’ simply needs to stop. It is wrong and sets a horrific precedent for future research and for children. Imagine what a youngster would think if he or she heard something like, ‘I met a rare and gorgeous bird today… and I killed him.’”
—–
Feature Image: Rob Moyle/Kansas University
Comments